
Class__F3Li2 

Book.___.S4-7 

Gopyriglit})^ 

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



FLORIDA FANCIES 



BY 



F. R. SWIFT 



WITH DRAWINGS BY 

ALBERT E. SMITH 



u 



G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

NEW YORK AND LONDON 

(Tbe "ffcnicfterbocker press 

1903 



THE LIBRARY OF | 
CONGRESS. 1 


Two Copies 


Haceived 


MAY 8 


1903 


Copyright 


Entry 
XXe.No. 




1^ 



Copyright, 1903 

BY 

FREDERICK R. SWIFT 



Published, April, 1903 



*y 4 >:*/;•:; 






Ube "BJnicfterbocftct press, IReNV igorft 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



FACING PAGE 



Snap Shot "• at a Sleepy 'Gator 



Frontispiece 

"Cracker" Cabins .... 

A Trapper's Camp on the St. John's 

A Florida Swamp 

Looking at his Teeth 

In Camp on the Ocklawaha 

Trapper Davis's Prize 

His Last Sleep . 

Trouble Ahead . 

Pete's Six-footer 

A Florida Cemetery . 



12 

i8 

24' 
42 V 

76 I 

84 

92V 





OWN the little watery lane out into the 

big sea road the Clyde liner crept. 

Then the puffing, snorting, spunky 

tug let go and spurted away. She 

looked like a little toy boat, and when 

she blew a good-by salute the "Clyder" 

responded with a scornful dignity and 

a basement basso which put to sleep all 

other noises. 

was a crisp, clear, cold November after- 
noon ; an ideal day. Yet, as we rounded the 
Battery and I looked back at fast-fading and 
fair New York, I could hardly repress a sigh of 
regret. 

Then we squared away into the lower bay, 
out to the wide wide sea, and for half a year I 



It 



Florida Fancies 



turned my back upon the pleasures and the 
pains of life in old New York. 

It was rather early for the Southern season, 
and the passengers were few. The only one I 
got well acquainted with was a Vermonter. He 
reminded me very strongly of the leading 
character in A Trip to CJdnatozvn. He had — 
or he said he had, anyway — a case of ** trot- 
ting " consumption. I supposed he meant 
' ' galloping, ' ' and argued the question with him, 
but he would n't have it. He said he was a 
horseman, and would n't have a galloping dis- 
ease any more than he 'd have a galloping 
horse. 

He was the most methodical man regard- 
He had been 
ordered South for 



his health, and he 
kept a regular ac- 
count of what the 
doctor told him to 
do. That doctor ev- 
idently believed he 
had all the patent- 
medicine diseases 
in the world as well 
as consumption. It 
was evident to me 
that a very large 



ing that disease I ever saw. 




Florida Fancies 3 

dose of Keeley cure would be the best thing 
on earth for that physician. 

The Vermonter, whose name was Morgan, 
had made about twenty calls on the doctor and 
at each call a new disease had been discovered. 
Talk about Columbus ! At the twentieth visit 
it was decided that consumption was the trouble. 
Then Mr. Morgan, who seemed to be an easy- 
going sort of individual, was started South. 

Directions and prescriptions for the other 
nineteen diseases were brought along, too, and 
it kept that man busy keeping books so as not 
to miss any of his appointments with them. 
When he slept I know not, because I know 
the dyspepsia medicine was taken every half- 
hour. Then there was a kidney disease which 
kept him pouring stuff every twenty minutes. 
He asked me to look him over, and I told 
him I thought he had castoria, but as there 
was nothing for it on board he did n't add it 
to his collection. 

Poor Morgan ! I saw him later in a recum- 
bent position in a low-down undertaker's shop 
in Jacksonville. The undertaker feelingly re- 
ferred to him as "his job." ''That 's always 
the trouble," he said ; "these fellows wait till 
they are almost dead with consumption and 
then they come down here expecting us to 
make brick house-s out of them in a few weeks. 



4 Florida Fancies 

The climate did n't help him. He kept falling 
lower and lower and finally fell down an ele- 
vator shaft and punctured his skull. And you 
people up North will lay it to the climate." 

The first stop was at Charleston. Of all the 
''morgued " towns in Uncle Sam's domain this 
one takes the highest medal. Its sidewalks are 
bad and its streets are awful, though it 's a city 
of sixty thousand people. Ask a man the right 
time and he '11 interrogate you as to whether 
you want slow time, fast time, railroad, or 
steamboat time. That 's what they asked me, 
and I told my informant that I 'd scrub along 
without any of them. Charleston has n't got 
over the war and the earthquakes yet. And, 
by the way the people talk, they never will. 
They sit there with folded hands waiting for 
either another war or another earthquake ; and 
I think if one or the other would come it would 
do them good. Then they 'd all move away 
and the town would wake up a little. 

But at the present it 's the most dilapidated 
kind of a town you or I ever struck. They 
have patched up their old houses with mortar 
and tried to make them look pleasant ; but 
they are the most melancholy kind of patches 
you ever saw. Mortar and melancholy never 
did look well together anyway. 

Just imagine any town in the North with a 



Florida Fancies 



5 



sign out like this in front of one of its largest 
dry goods stores : 






Another sign pleased me. It was hanging 
in a restaurant window. This is it : 

mEAKFA^lS READY' 



M 



QMl IN. 



^f/ 



The only man in Charleston who seemed to 
have any life was the purser of our boat, and 
he made a bee-line run for a telegraph office as 
soon as we struck the dock. But he was pe- 
culiarly situated. The fact is his wife was sick. 
At noon the day we left New York she had 
given birth to a baby boy; at two o'clock she 
had given birth to a baby girl. The returns 
were not all in, the doctor thought, but the 
purser had to skip for his boat, as it left at 



6 Florida Fancies 

three, and he was in a brown study until we got 
to Charleston. He looked sad when I met him 
coming back from the telegraph office, so I 
guess it was triplets. 





^^ 








CHAPTER II 

WHEN I got to Jack- 
sonville my yacht 
captain was sitting on the dock 
sunning himself and dreamily chew- 
ing a mixed "cud" of reflection 
tobacco. The Lela Bell, a thirty-five foot 
naphtha launch, lay floating on the water like 
a duck at high tide. She had been primed 
and prinked till she shone like a bevelled-edge 
French plate mirror. 

7 



8 



Florida Fancies 



She is the only type of boat I could possibly 
have used on a Florida expedition. For years 
I had been aching to see what the country was 
like away from civilization. I wanted to do the 
St. John's River clear down to the Okechobee 
swamp if possible, hundreds of miles from 
where it is naturally navigable. 

I wanted to find out the truth of some of the 

big alligator, bear, and deer stories. Then I 

wanted, incidentally, to get material and game 

so that I could come back and tell bigger ones. 

Then I surmised that on the 

upper Ocklawaha River, 

which is not navigable to 

ordinary boats, considerable 

sport might be had. 

All that day we were busy 

loading up. There was at 

least a ton of groceries and 

canned goods, a thousand 

rounds of all kinds of 

ammunition, a lot of 

o^enuine pills, and 

also a lot of wet 

stuff to go with 

them. Then 

we put eighty 

gallons of naphtha 

in her tank and fifty 




Florida Fancies 9 

more in boxes in the rowboat we towed, and 
away we went the next morning for Palatka, 
seventy-five miles away. 

And now as to the crew. There 's the cap- 
tain, a funny mixture of a Pennsylvania Dutch- 
man and a New England Yank, red-headed and 
full of fire, but good-natured all the time. 

But oh, the cook! Shall I forget her? Never! 
And echo answers just the same. Delmonico 
never did better than this "fair, fat, and forty " 
widow. Perhaps it was that only sauce in the 
world — hunger; perhaps it was the climate; 
most "perhapsly" it was the cooking, but I 
gained twenty pounds in a week. And the 
captain gained more, for the cook weighs good 
180, and he 's going to marry her. And I 'm 
sorry I did n't ask her myself. 

How in the world she ever got up those 
dainty and delicious dishes 'way out there 
in the wilds is a mystery to me. I got her 
in Jacksonville at an intelligence office. She 
seemed to take a fancy to me at once. She said 
I was the living picture of her husband, who had 
been dead five years. I kindly and gently told 
her that I was not in the living-picture busi- 
ness as a regular thing, but if it afforded her 
any satisfaction to think so I would let her. 

I told her what was wanted of her and 
she seemed to take it as a matter of course. 



lO 



Florida Fancies 



She would accept me as -an em- 
ployer, she said. "I 've lots of 
references, sur, in me trunk, and 
shure they are from the best of 
families." I thought that rather 
!j, I funny, as I had never engaged 
1^ \ servants before, but told her to 
'^ keep them there — that I guessed 
there would be no policeman on 
our beat, and rather surmised that 
she would behave herself. 

And she was a treasure. I shall 
never forget her or her costume. 
I have the fortune, or misfortune, 
whichever you call it, to be a 
yachtsman. I also have a friend 
named — well, never mind, but 
^- we '11 call him "Billy." He 's 
a Wall Street broker, and lately dropped from 
the great army of bachelors and joined the 
benedicts. His wife is one of those ultra- 
marine, aesthetic type of girls, speaks five lan- 
guages with fluency, and rides a bicycle with 
ease. Now, if there is anything "Billy" de- 
tests it is a Jenness-Miller kind of costume, and 
his wife rather affects it. I invited them on the 
yacht last year shortly after their return from 
the bridal tour. I was looking for a fight the 
minute Mrs. "Billy," we'll call her, stepped 




Florida Fancies 



II 



on board. Well, to cut it short, "Billy " won, 

and someway a certain bloomer costume was 

left behind and it got mixed 

with my Southern traps. Then 

the cook found it, and she 

thought it was built for her 

and appropriated it. But that 

was n't the worst of it. She 

ran into a pair of my hunting 

leggings and thinking they were 

a part of the costume strapped 

them on. You can imagine 

how a ''fair, fat, and forty" 

Irish widow would look. 

Then there was the cabin- 
boy. We called him a cabin- 
boy. I don't know where it 
came in, but he gloried in the 
title, and I let him have it, though I could n't 
find the cabin. The Lela Bell has a naphtha 
engine in her capable of pushing her ten miles 
an hour. She only draws about two feet 
and is as comfortable a boat as one could 
wish. At night the cabin-boy gets his fine 
work in, and with thick portieres makes three 
compartments out of the boat for sleeping 
purposes. 

The boy was a thorough "Cracker," and 
proud of the name. A white-livered, chalky 




12 



Florida Fancies 



specimen of the genus homo, slow of speech 
and slow of action. "Cracker " is a term for a 
born and bred Floridian. They all look as if 
they had a lead-pipe mortgage on a life endow- 
ment of malaria. Pale-faced and sickly look- 
ing, they are not in any respects pleasing, and 
are continually having the "shakes." I told 
one man I thought it was wrong for him to be 
"shaking" so much, as it injured, in my opin- 
ion, the morals of the community. 

He said he did n't 
know ; he 'd never had a 
drink out of it yet and 
he 'd been shaking all his 
life. 

Then he shook some 
more. 

And I broke a record 
for him. 

It is no doubt the fault 
of the country. Most of 
the people live back from 
civilization, away in the 
swamps, where the ma- 
laria must be something 
terrible when one lives 
there the year round. I 
have never seen a genu- 
ine "Cracker" yet but 




Florida Fancies 



13 



what had the same dead-white color, and I 
have seen him with children ranging from one 
to fifteen years old and they all looked the 
same. A scientific man I met once claimed 
that in the case of the children it was caused 
by their appetite for the fine sand of the coun- 
try, he insisting that they ate it. 








CHAPTER III 

Don't know the place, 
Forgotten the date. 

COULD I but word-paint you the picture 
before me I should feel sure of my 
career. But it 's impossible; no painter could 
produce upon canvas the beauty of a dying day 
in tropical Florida. I think it must be either 
Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. I 've been 
away from railroads, from post-offices, and from 
14 



Florida Fancies 15 

all civilization for three weeks. You, up in the 
frozen North, with evidence of culture and a 
plenty of people, railroads, and steamboats on 
every hand, can hardly realize that I 've not 
seen a living soul outside of my crew for twenty- 
one days. It 's fifty miles to the nearest settle- 
ment across country, and we are only three 
hundred miles south of Jacksonville, but one 
hundred miles from Sanford, the nearest post- 
ofifice on the river. 

To the east, west, north, and south a watery 
prairie. Dotted here and there by straight, 
stiff rows of palmettos, by bunches. of cabbage 
palms, and by oases of weeds, it presents a 
sight worth many a day's journey. Miles on 
miles of water everywhere. The setting sun 
shines down upon one vast lake. 

We are tied up for the night to a big bunch 
of prairie grass. The music of a Florida even- 
ing is beginning. The shrill call of the coot, 
the scream of the blue heron, and the trolley 
trill of the raft duck are commingled. Then 
from a distance comes the evening and hoarse 
cry of the alligator and the weird whispers of 
the hoot-owl. 

Calm and still as a summer night is this in- 
land lake; a Christmas quiet and a Christmas 
peace reign. The red sun glistens down upon 
the waters, bespeaking another beauteous day. 



i6 



Florida Fancies 




For five weeks it has been that way : 
a beautiful sunrise, a beautiful sunset, 
and a beautiful sun day. Not a suspi- 
cion of a cloud 
or a sign '^^S!"^^^' of rain in thirty-five 





days, 
of 

thirty-five has been a 
Northern June day. ^^'^^ 
the thermometer reaching to- 
ward the eighties every day and a couple 
of blankets necessary every night, what 
more could one desire for a midwinter 
night's dream ! 

When they told me that it would be almighty 
hard job" to get below Sanford on the St. John's 
River they told me the truth, and it 's the first 
time I 've been told the truth in five winters in 
Florida. I had charts galore, compasses in plen- 
ty, and information more than I wanted. There 
was water, they thought, but it would be hard 
to keep in the channel, which is only twenty 
feet wide. But they did n't tell enough. The 
fact is that the St. John's River was very high, 
having risen over seven feet in a week. Florida 
is flat land, with hardly a hill in all the State 
bigger than a New England schoolhouse. Con- 
sequently, the seven feet of water had to go 
somewhere and it has just overflowed the prairie. 




Florida Fancies 



17 




Whereas, formerly, you only had to follow 
the channel, now you have to pick it out of a 
continual inland lake, miles and miles in width. 
That 's fun, is n't it? 

That accounts for the fact that we are lost 
to-night, and compasses, charts, and informa- 
tion don't help us an inch. 

It took us two days to get out of the place, 
which I opine to be Puzzle Lake on the chart, 
fifty miles below Sanford. 
And it 's rightly named. 

We finally got down as far as it was possible 
to go, and we ran on the way back with a three- 
^"^ mile-an-hour current, which is, as the 
captain puts it, ''dead easy." I have one 
red mark in this world, any- 
way, and that is that I have 

^ ried my private yachting signal 

^^^^^^ and the New Haven Club flag 
^^^^^^^ ^^^^^ south on the St. John's 
River than ^^^g any yachtsman or sports- 
man has ever ^ ^^^ ^^^"- ^^^^ 
that honor amounts ^^^^ to, I don't 
know. Guess it won't ^^ bring- me 
any medals. It took patien ^^^ ce, per- 
severance, and 
push to get that 
far. Every day 
was a day of 



car 





i8 



Florida Fancies 



fighting forward. Day after day we had to cut 
our way through pond-lilies and weeds as tough 
as a rope. 

Many a day we made less than eight miles. 
Such work tells on an engine, and if that broke 
down it meant weeks before we could get back 
to civilization. 

It 's a lazy kind of life we lead. We go 




to bed with the sun, or at the latest by six 
o'clock, and sleep soundly until 6 A.M. You 
see there 's no opera houses, no concerts, — in 
fact nowhere to go. For days sometimes we 
could n't get off the boat going through the 
swampy country, as there would be four feet 
of water even in the forests. Game down here 
is plenty; but you 've got to get out in the 
wilds and know where to go for it. As for us. 



Florida Fancies 



19 



we have n't moved or turned aside for it, 
except in the case of deer. We have shot 
all we wanted, and more too, without 
leaving the boat, and going along at full 
speed. 

And I '11 just say this to a few sports- 
men who think they can hit anything they 
see: Just give this kind of sport a chance 
and see where your hand is. It 's harder 
than you know. Your bird is flying, and 
with a boat going ten miles an hour you 've 
got to be a quick judge of allowance and a 
rapid shot. 

I have seen ducks so thick that the water 
ahead would be black with them for two 
hundred feet. When they flew they would 
make a noise like the rushing of a whirl- 
wind. "Coots " are most plentiful. On 
either Lake Dexter, Dead Lake, or Lake 
Harney one can get at least fifty in two 




20 



Florida Fancies 



hours' time any morning. Then come the raft 
duck, a few mallards, and some stray canvas- 
backs. 

Snipe and quail are plentiful, and geese 
abound. 

But, talking about game, don't let the alli- 
gator idea get hold of you. Most Northern 
people who have never been South are pos- 
sessed of the idea that Florida is flooded with 
the brutes. But it 's not. A few years ago 
when the alligator bag, alligator satchel, and 
alligator purse were the reigning fad, the poor 
devils were hunted night and day for their skins 
and their teeth. A * ' Cracker ' ' hunter thought 
nothing of bringing in forty skins for a day's 
hunt. At that time on the Ocklawaha River 
one could readily see three or four hundred on 
a day's trip. Now, if you see three or four 
you 're lucky. 




i^. 



\ 







CHAPTER IV 

THERE 'S a tall, handsome, blond-haired- 
looking Connecticut individual, the even 
tenor of whose luxurious life will be rudely 
broken into when I return. Last summer when 
we went yachting together in one of the six 
trunks and four bandboxes which accompanied 
him he had a beautiful array of shoes of a black, 
a white, and a dusky brown color with patent 
inside and outside two-inch rubber soles. They 
were marvels to look at, and I admired them 
so much that he presented me with a pair of 
the dusky broAvnSo 

21 



22 Florida Fancies 

Every time I put them on they got me into 
trouble. Those rubber soles on a wet deck are 
like so much sweet oil under you. The other 
day as we were spinning along up a side creek 
I dropped a thirty-eight calibre rifle-ball into a 
big twelve-foot alligator taking a snooze on the 
bank. The captain ran the boat in and I made 
a jump for the bank, rifle in hand. 

But fate and those shoes said otherwise. 
Those rubber soles flew under me in the soft 
mud and back I went into twenty feet of water. 
Mr. 'Gator, who I thought was dead, woke up 
lively and ugly. 

He dropped in after me. 

Then I was in a pickle. I did n't want to 
stay down, for if I did I was booked for a 
watery ascension to the other world. If I 
ascended, the alligator would book me. The 
captain did n't dare shoot, for he might hit me, 
and then there would be trouble, sure. 

I finally compromised by swimming to the 
other side of the creek, and the 'gator let me go 
and I let him go, which no doubt was a wise 
move for both. 

It was almost a relief when we turned from 
the big and broad St. John's into the narrow 
and sinuous Ocklawaha River. Say what you 
will, write what you will, telephone what you 
can, there 's no river in Europe that equals 



Florida Fancies 



23 



that river for scenery. It 's a letter S all the 
way from the start to the finish of its 175 
miles. I can testify to the fact that it has 
ninety-nine curves to every mile.^ 

It is so crooked that 
it reminds me of '' 
what comedian Mark -- 
Murphy once said of 
Boston streets. "Be 
j a b e r s , " he ex- 
claimed, "I started 
out one morning 
to see a friend and 
the turns were so 
sudden that I met 
meself coming 
back ! ' ' 

The tall trees 
are draped with 
southern moss, and 
as the sun comes 
peering through, 

shedding its rays _^^ ^_ 

upon the weird scene you can ^-^i^ 

only liken it to Stanley's description of an 
African forest. It is a muddy, turbid stream 
averaging about thirty feet in width. On the 
guide card describing it I think there are about 
sixty-seven stations; but don't get fooled, be- 




24 



Florida Fancies 



cause there are only about four places on the 
entire river that you could possibly land at. 
The rest of the way is one continual swamp. 
Tall cypress trees covered with Spanish moss, 
mistletoe, and Florida morning-glories line both 
banks. It finds its source in some little lake 
near Leesburg, but it is not navigable for 
seventy-five miles of its course except by some 
tourist like myself. Navigation starts in on 
Silver Springs Run, at the 
famous sulphur springs. The 
water there from the spring 
runs like a whirlwind down 
for nine miles to join the 
Ocklawaha. It is from sixty^ 
to eighty feet deep and as clear 
as crystal. You can see the 
smallest object crawling on the 
bed of the river. 

The mystery of the springs 




Florida Fancies 



25 



I believe has never been fathomed. It is 
one of the wonders of the world. The United 
States sent a commission to in- 
vestigate it some years ago, but 
their report cannot be accurate, as 
a new spring has made its appear- 
ance since then. But I believe their 
claim is that fifteen million gallons 
of water rush out of the five 
springs every hour. With a de- 
scent of sixty feet in the first nine 
miles, you can readily see what 
rushing, whirling, eddying tor- 
rent it is. 

One of the most 
unique bachelors' 
establishments - 
in the 
world is A A' 
at the "^ 
springs ; 
anyway, 
it 's 



saw. 

tain Gibbons is its 




owner, and I guess he 



26 



Florida Fancies 



owns everything worth having around the 
springs. The land on both sides of the docks 
and wharves is his, so you see he has a lead- 
pipe cinch on the water. 

Tall, broad-shouldered, stout of frame and 
stout of heart, he is the perfect type of a South- 
ern gentleman. His "ranch," 
as he terms it, is a two-story 
house built over the water. Many 
a time, when his colored cook 
has n't appeased my hunger for 
fish, I 've lifted a trap-door, 
thrown out a line, and caught 
more while the frying-pan was 
warming; and this without 
moving from my chair. There 's 
no bath-tub necessary there. 
Simply another trap-door, three 
steps down, and you can have a 
bath in the clearest, cleanest 
water in the world. No matter 
what the air temperature is, the 
water temperature never varies. 
As we rounded the 
.— ..^^ last curve in sight 
of the Captain's, 
there was a 
sound of ar- 
^ tillery. The 




%^'M:. 




Florida Fancies 



27 



Captain had gathered all Silver Springs' popu- 
lation there, armed them with shotguns, and 
they were saluting us. I should n't have been 
a bit surprised if he 'd had a few brass bands 
around. 

But the afternoon brought bad luck. The 
Captain had been looking forward to my visit 
for some time. Men had been sent out hunt- 
ing for the trail of the deer and the roost of the 
wild turkey. Orders had been issued to all the 
population to keep their shotguns home and 
let the birds alone till after my visit. Then we 
were going to put the launch on wheels and cart 
her across country to Gulf Ham- 
mock, which is, as the Captain 
puts it, ''God's own hunting- 
ground." 

But my horse Jack changed 
the plans. A chunky sorrel 
devil of a broncho, 
trained for hunt- ,^ 

ing, he never 
turns a hair 
when you fire 
over him and 
will follow 
the dogs 
through the 
thickest 




28 



Florida Fancies 



woods ever known. I call him mine because 
I always use him when there. The Captain 
had saved him up for three weeks for me. He 
had been fed on the fat of the land and no 
man had thrown a leg over him in that time. 
Naturally, he was feeling very frisky, and 
when the Captain mounted him to show him 
off to me he threw him, badly bruising the 
Captain and shattering his jaw. 




'^,-n 



CHAPTER V 



[KNOW I '11 never forget the 
ride I had that night on Jack. 
The Captain lay on the ground 
unconscious for ten minutes be- 
fore we could bring him to. The 
left side of his jaw was swelled 
fully two inches, and he seemed 
to be in great pain. I knew the 
best thing for him was a doctor, 
and as the nearest one was at 
Ocala, six miles away, I told them 
to saddle my favorite and I would 
go. But Brown, the Captain's 
valet and bodyguard, absolutely 
refused to allow any of the colored 
crackers to saddle him. 

Massa, ' ' he said, ' ' youse know 
better ; that devil has got a wicked 
streak on, and he '11 kill you same 
as he has Mars Gibbons." 



29 



30 Florida Fancies 

Now, as far as riding an equine, the Captain 
was my beau-ideal of a horseman. He sat his 
horse, saddle or no saddle, and he was flesh of 
his flesh and bone of his bone. He had been 
a Confederate cavalry captain in the war and 
many said in the four years he had grown to 
his horse and slept and eaten in the saddle. 
He never bothered with the reins, but always 
guided his horse with his knees and voice. 

And as far as I was concerned, my life had 
been too busy a one to learn horsemanship. 
Put me on a dress-parade horse or start me out 
on a sachet-bag hunt, and I should be a sorry 
spectacle for any kind of foreign gods. But 
get me out in the wilds with Jack and he 
could n't throw me, no matter how wicked he 
was feeling; and that is a pretty good test 
with a wild Western stallion under you. 

And so, with blood up and the confidence of 
a fairly young youth, I saddled him myself and 
with a jump was on his back. Before the 
darkies had opened the gate Jack had made a 
running jump and cleared the fence. Talk 
about Sheridan's ride! For the first mile that 
broncho kept me guessing and holding on. 
He tried his old trick of bending his knees and 
stopping suddenly, but it did n't work. The 
ride was through pine woods and what I ex- 
pected I got in the first mile. Jack simply ran 



Florida Fancies 31 

me into a tree and tried to sweep me off by- 
brushing against the trunk ; but it was another 
old trick of his and I was ready for him. I 
just leaned over as he struck that tree and hit 
him one crack with the butt end of a loaded 
whip. 

That seemed to be proof positive to him that 
I was not an ''easy" boss and without more 
ado he landed me in Ocala inside of fifteen 
minutes. 

The doctor said it would be weeks before the 
Captain would be around again, and so, after a 
week of nursing and hunting around Silver 
Springs, I decided to take a run on the upper 
Ocklawaha in an attempt to get to Leesburg 
through a chain of lakes. 

But I had one little adventure before I left 
which came near placing me where I should 
have had to dictate this story to a silver-winged 
type-writer in the other world. Cap. Jr., a 
chip of the old block, proposed that we go out 
"jacking" some night. Up in Maine we go 
"jacking " for deer, but this was to be a case 
of spearing for fish and one particular alligator. 
Now this particular one was a tradition. I 
always scouted traditions, and as I did n't want 
to break my rule this time I went scouting after 
this one. 

There was a certain spot about three miles 



32 



Florida Fancies 



down the run where this alligator loafed by day 
and by night. In age he was placed at about a 
hundred and in size anywhere from sixteen feet 
to thirty. According to Bradstreet's and other 
reports, he had been shot at and hit at least a 
thousand times, but never bothered to wink 
more than one eye and depart. Night after 
night and day after day he had 
been hunted. The best alliga- 
tor hunters all over Florida had 
spent days at Silver Springs look- 
ing him up, but that 'gator's 
apartments were still furnished 
by himself. 

Young Cap. had seen him at 
least ten times, and as he was not 
much of a fisherman I onty cut his 
conservative estimate of twenty feet 
in lengfth in two. So one 




Florida Fancies 



33 



wire basket filled with selected pitch-pine sticks. 

When fired it gives a bright light and is used to 

dazzle both deer and alligators. 

If perfect quiet is kept, a deer seeing the 

bright light will come to the banks of the 

stream, and in a measure it hypnotizes him. 

And so it is with alligators. You can let your 

boat drift within ten feet of them and they will 

remain perfectly 

motionless. If ,,^ ^ i'^fn\i|lT«';if<Yi; !')/ i,;, mi 

no noise is 

made you 

can take all 

the time 

you want to i'U'l 

get perfect W 1 

aim. 

So down 
the stream 
with a five- 




34 Florida Fancies 

mile current we floated. We had rigged up a 
fishing spear. They are three-pronged barbed 
steel forks imbedded in the end of a twelve- 
foot pole. The other end of the pole is fastened 
to a rope which is tied in a loose knot around 
your wrist. 

The harpoonist stands up at the bow of the 
boat, and though it takes considerable skill we 
landed about twenty-one big fish, mostly pick- 
erel and trout ranging from three to eight 
pounds. Then, as we were nearing our place, 
I gave up my fork to young Cap. and loaded 
my Winchester. I was just pushing the last 
bullet in when I heard a swish. Away went 
the harpoon, and with the help of a yell from 
the harpoonist it buried itself in what I could 
plainly see was a monster alligator just crossing 
the stream. 

"You fool, you!" I shouted in my excite- 
ment; "let go the pole; that fellow will drown 
us." But I was too late. Mr. 'Gator had 
tautened on it, and the rope knot was fast 
round Cap.'s wrist. 

"Cut it, cut it!" I shouted. But by that 
time Cap. had all he could do to hang on to 
the boat. Then Mr. 'Gator, who saw he was 
fastened, was in for fight. With a rush he 
came head on at the boat, then turned and hit 
it a vicious blow with his tail, breaking in the 



Florida Fancies 35 

side, knocking out the lighted pine-knots, and 
making a blazing funeral pyre out of young 
Cap., who was trying gallantly to rid himself 
of his prize. 

Then the darky oarsman lost his head. 
With a yell like a war-dancing Comanche he 
jumped out of the boat and swam for the 
shore. But he did the best thing after all to 
help us out. As I was in the stern seat I could 
not shoot for fear of the rower, who was bob- 
bing around like a sewing-machine shuttle in 
motion. 

Then with a clear field I just held that rifle 
towards that tradition and without aiming let 
him have it. He was so near and so big that I 
could n't miss him, and the shots came so thick 
and so fast that they stunned him. The boat 
was filling with water, putting out the fire, and 
the current pushing us into a bend in the 
shore. Cap. and I made one jump for the near- 
est tree as the boat sank in sixty feet of water. 

Then Mr. Alligator began to get his second 
wind. But by this time Cap. had loosened 
the knot and taken a couple of hitches around 
the tree with the rope, and as the big brute was 
badly wounded, we judged he was our meat. 

But we were in a pickle. A wounded alli- 
gator is the worst thing to tackle on this earth, 
and as my rifle was at the bottom of the river. 



36 



Florida Fancies 



we were helpless. It was two men up a tree 
sure, but in an hour all Silver Springs was on 
the way down the run with any old watery con- 
ve3^ance they could pick up. The ** darkey" 
had not stopped running till he got there and 
the entire village was alarmed. A few shots 








Kk^ 




more settled the alligator, and to-day I use him 
for a grip. He measured fourteen feet seven 
inches from nose to tip of tail, which is a mighty 
big alligator these days, no matter what they 
tell you. 

There 's only one bigger that I know of and 
he 's way up in Lake Griffin, and I hope to 




LOOKING AT HIS TEETH 



Florida Fancies z"] 

gather his scalp next year, as it will be my third 
year after him. 

I went "jacking " once more, but gave it up 
after that, as it disgusted me. It 's well enough 
for pot hunters, but it strikes me as a mighty 
tame and cowardly sort of sport. It was in a 
fourteen-mile creek near Dead Lake ; I had for 
guide and oarsman a typical J. Fennimore 
Cooper hunter. I believe that man could 
scent a deer a mile off with the wind against 
him. He knew every foot of forest and stream 
for twenty miles. There was n't a spot, wet 
or dry, in that region that he could n't take 
you to, the darkest night. He knew the haunt 
of the Hooping Crane as well as the feeding- 
ground of the finny Goggle-eye ; he could fol- 
low a deer's track as easily as you and I could 
go up Broadway in a cable car. 

I think he must have copied his costume 
from a Cooper hero, and his gun was old and 
antiquated enough to have been carried by one 
of them ; but when it went to his shoulder, 
aged and rusty as it was, something had to 
come. 

The night was one of those dark cloudy ones 
with a damp chill in the air that went clean 
through j^ou. As we went across the lake the 
mist commenced to rise like rain, reversing 
the rule. With mufifled oars we crept into the 



38 



Florida Fancies 



creek, and then stopped to warm up with 
quinine pills and the usual accompaniment. 
As I was to do the shooting, I adjusted the 
latter-day style of "jack," which is a bull's- 
eye lantern fastened on your head by a broad 
leather strap. The bull's eye must come in 
the centre of your forehead, and then it makes 
a sort of a semi-searchlight out of you. This 
you manipulate by throwing your 
head from side to side flashing 
ir I the light from bank to bank of 

the creek into 
the woods. 

I was sitting 
inthe bow with 
my rifle over 
my knees fol- 
lowing the line 
of light. Out- 




Florida Fancies 39 

side of that range I could not see my hand 
before me, yet that guide rowed me at least 
twenty miles that night though creeks, little 
watery alleys, and small lakes, yet never made 
one mistake. 

Silent and speechless he rowed on and on. 
It was midnight before the noiseless dip of his 
oars slackened. Then we both gazed through 
the darkness at two glaring balls of fire low 
down on the west bank. I flashed my light on 
them and taking careful easy aim pinked that 
alligator with a forty-four right between the 
eyes. There was a sudden bellow, a splash, 
and a dash of water in our faces, and the white 
under-hide of that fellow was floating down the 
stream. 

It had been a clean "kill," and after picking 
him up we took some more pills and kept on. 

It was hours after that before we had luck 
again. We were just leaving the creek for the 
lake on the campward journey when a rushing 
sound startled me. I flashed the light to the 
bank where the sound came from and there, 
standing full in front of me, head upraised as 
if defying fate, was a magnificent buck. I had 
shot deer before, but never in so close a range. 
He could not have been over fifteen feet from 
me, and I could feel my hand shake a little as 
I lifted my gun. 



40 Florida Fancies 

I choked the feeling down and sighted for 
his head. There he stood in all his beauty ; a 
monarch of a Florida forest. A feeling of awe 
came over me in the stillness of the night and 
the silence of the woods; no sound except the 
trickle of the water as it swished against the 
oar blades. I could see the drops of dew on 
the gun barrel as, with finger on the trigger, I 
waited. Dazed and motionless, he seemed to 
wait his death like a hero waiting for execution. 
Then a feeling of pity at murdering so crept 
over me and I dropped my gun and turned to 
the guide. 

"I 'm blamed if I '11 shoot at him," I said; 
** bring on an old cow alligator and I '11 do it, 
but I can't kill that fellow." 

With the sound of my voice the deer was 
away, and that 's the last "jack " hunting I '11 
ever do. 




CHAPTER VI 



IT was a hot January day when the last salvo 
of the Silver Springs colored contingent was 
fired and the first bend in the river hid us from 
sight. We were on our way toward the un- 
travelled and unhunted region of the upper 
41 



42 Florida Fancies 

Ocklawaha. The thermometer had a high- 
water mark of ninety, and both the sun and the 
mercury were bulls. The first nine miles was 
down the Silver Springs Run and away in a 
rush and whirl we went. With a pouring 
torrent of a boiling sulphur current, with a full 
head of steam and a curve in the river every 
hundred feet, there was danger enough to 
please any man. Then, too, the big unwieldy 
Ocklawaha boats were due. The narrowness of 
the stream would not allow us to pass, and it 
was necessary to turn into some little creek 
or bay. But we were in luck. In forty-five 
minutes the nine miles was made and just 
as we rounded Hell Gate Island into the 
upper river the Lucas line boat loomed ahead, 
with the opposition boat only twenty feet 
behind. 

It was once again the rivalry of the Missis- 
sippi boats in the old Mark Twain days. The 
two had been nip and tuck all night long. 
They were now hugging each other for a spurt 
in the fairly open water of the last mile run. 
Then there would be fun. The leading boat 
now had the right of way and puffed along 
like a fat king with the asthma. The trailer 
could do nothing but trail, for she could n't 
pass the leader without pushing her into the 
woods. The passengers on the decks were 







1 

J- 




i."--.|A: Ai^ •" 


^•' 


•^ 


f ■■■■', • 


** 






^^^^^^^^^h: ^^m ' 



Florida Fancies 43 

howling and clasping each other's hands with 
excitement. 

As I thought, it was a good alligator day. 
They were just commencing to break away 
from their long winter sleep in the mud. At 
noon we stopped for lunch. It had been a 
thirty-mile run through cypress woods out into 
an open meadow. In that three-hour run we 
had counted twenty-six alligators. Either my 
aim was poor or they were a Bowery lot, for I 
only got four. 

In the afternoon for miles and miles our 
course lay through this snaky river, bordered 
with tall grass and ferns. Game, as we left 
civilization, became plentiful and we had no 
difficulty in bagging a dozen ducks. Hundreds 




in a flock they flew and I picked them off with 
a rifle, sighting the ones flying directly over the 
stream so that our "Cracker" cabin *'kid " 
could gather them in as we skipped along. 
Innumerable and multi-colored birds flew 



44 Florida Fancies 

screeching away at the sound of the en- 
gine. 

Magnificent specimens of the blue heron were 
there ; one could even get a view of an egret, a 
rare bird in Florida now; then a pair of big 
hooping cranes streamed away, followed by a 
crew of saintly-white herons. Many of the 
birds were new to me, and I have in front of 
me a monkey-faced albino owl I captured that 
day, the first I ever saw. 

Then that poor despised bird, the Florida 
limpkin, was in plenty. Talk about your 
early-in-the-year chicken or Philadelphia squab, 
there 's no meat so delicious as a properly 
cooked limpkin. It 's a water-bird built like 
a small stork, of a light brown color. It 's a 
shame, however, to shoot them. They can't 
hear and don't see very far, so they make des- 
picable pot shots. They travel in pairs. I 
shot one that evening just as we landed and 
the piteous, almost human cry of its mate, who 
hovered around all night, gave me the night- 
mare. 

Our stopping-place was the first elevation we 
had seen that day, and it was a relief to get 
away from that fifteen miles of meadow prairie. 
It was sloped down to the water covered with 
pine and cypress trees and morning-glory vines 
in full flower. I judged, from a few bones and 



Florida Fancies 



45 



an old time Indian cooking-pot, that it was a 
big Indian burial mound. 

We built a big fire to keep away wildcats 
and snakes, and slept under the waving cypress 
and the moaning pine that night. The moon 
silvering through the trailing southern moss 
cast me into a reminiscent mood. It was about 
theatre-time on Broadway. What was the 
weather? Probably snowing and blowing great 
guns, while I lay rolled up cosy and warm in a 
blanket. Had Jack made up with his wife yet? 








-^fr^^%'^:_ J^-^^#^ 




46 Florida Fancies 

Was Dick still smitten on the Casino ballet 
girl, and who was at the club? Then som- 
nolence overcame reminiscence and silence 
reigned but for the uneducated snore of the 
cook in the boat below. 

At night I was rudely and violently assailed 
by my crew and awoke dreaming that a horde 
of limpkins in the guise of elephants were using 
me as an asphalt pavement. Wild yells greeted 
me, and for a second I thought I was in the 
bottom of the other world's sea of fire. The 
southern moss drooping from the trees almost 
to the ground had caught fire and the woods 
were ablaze with light. From branch to branch 
the fire leaped like forked lightning and for 
hundreds of feet in the air it looked like Dante's 
inferno. My blanket was ablaze from fiery 
moss, and my hair and clothes were singeing. 
I made one jump for the water, where the Cap- 
tain and young Cap. had preceded me. Then 
we gave the boat a push and out into the stream 
she floated with the current. 

At longer range it was a magnificent spec- 
tacle, but we finished the rest of the night in 
the boat lower down the stream. 

We got away early the next morning. The 
stream kept "shallowing," and many a keel 
track we left in that mud. The weeds, too, 
were thick and at noon we had n't made over 



Florida Fancies 



47 



five miles. It was laborious work as the boat 
had to be stopped every ten minutes to clean 
the wheel. We were about to tie up at noon 
when a series of unearthly whistles shook me 
into the shivers. I was watching what I 
thought was a deer ahead fording the river, 
but I dropped my gun in amazement. 

Again it sounded, and I counted five, the 
signal of a steamer in distress. I had heard 
and read of all kinds of apparitions but never 
of a steamer's ghost. There never had been a 
steamer through this narrow, shallow stream. 
That was an impossibility. Then what could 
it be? 

I climbed to the top of the cabin house and 
could distinctly see, a mile away through p 
break in the trees, a boat 
I recognized in a sheep's 
tail-shake. It was the 
Alligator J owned by 
Dr. Moore, of Phila- 
delphia. That ex- 
plained everything. 
Dr. Moore has a fad. 
And he can't seem to 
get over it. His fad 
is hunting for Indian relics 
and he 's chased them from 
coast to coast. Every winter 




48 Florida Fancies 

for years I have met him in some out-of-the- 
way place on his digging expeditions in Florida. 
And as long as he 's alive I suppose he '11 keep 
right on at the same old game. He 's rich 
enough, so I shan't stop him. 

As for myself, I hunted with him one day, 
but it was too monotonous. It struck me as 
being a very dead kind of sport. I felt at the 
end of the day as if I wanted to stick up one 
of the Indian skulls and shoot at an eye-hole to 
see if it would n't wink once more. The 
Doctor has published several large-sized works 
nobly illustrated with pictures of an only good 
Indian's bones. The books are not intensely 
exciting and the largeness is in their size and 
not in circulation. 

The Alligator is a small-sized edition of an 
Ocklawaha steamer, about sixty feet long and 
twelve wide. She was built expressly for the 
Doctor and only draws a foot and a half of 
water, loaded. The Doctor appears in Florida 
about September, bringing with him his cook, 
his steward, his engineer, and captain. Then 
he hires his waiters and other help in Palatka, 
including about twenty colored gentlemen to 
do the excavating. 

I suppose the Doctor is the best Indian 
mound hunter in the world. I never could tell 
how he ever trailed them as he was shy on dogs 



Florida Fancies 49 

and the two he did have seemed to be poor 
mongrel brutes, and no use for sport. He 
seemed to sniff them from afar, but that don't 
look probable, as the relics had been passe too 
long. What he ever did with his game was a 
mystery to me. There was a photograph fac- 
tory on board, but no tallow dip or phosphate 
store. And I know he told me once that' he 
got seven thousand pieces out of one mound. 

So we kept on for another mile and came 
upon the relic hunter and his boat in distress. 
The water had deepened and the current was 
running strong. The bow of the boat had 
lodged up against one bank, the current had 
struck the stern, which married the other bank, 
and there she was, stuck fast. 

The Lela Bell went into business as a tug 
boat, and after an hour's pulling we got the 
Alligator off. Then, as we were both booked 
for the same way, we joined hands. For two 
weeks we were together, and as the Doctor had 
some friends with him who played the usual 
Philadelphia game of poker, I passed many an 
enjoyable evening. We parted company about 
ten miles from Lake Griffin, as the Doctor 
sniffed a mound. The Lela Bell had one set- 
back. That was near Leesburg. Five years 
before a railroad had been built. It ran over 
the river and had the usual drawbridge. But 



50 Florida Fancies 

as no boat had ever been through it in all those 
five years the draw was n't in the best opening 
mood. It took a wrecking train and forty- 
men to get it open. It also took four days, 
but as the railroad company sent down a special 
train every morning to take me anywhere I 
wished, I did n't mind it much. As it cost 
them about one thousand dollars, I don't sup- 
pose that corporation thinks much of exploring 
expeditions in general and damns that one of 
mine in particular. 




i^i^ _.x- 









CHAPTER VII 



IT was away up near the 
headwaters of the Ocklawaha ""^^ 
that I met "Dick" Travers. Had 
he been a white- winged angel in •^^^cfli 
brown bloomers I could not have 
been more surprised. To get into 
Lake Eustis I had to go through a rather wide 
stream, very properly named Dead River be- 
cause of its sluggishness, and I tied up to a 
cypress tree on its banks one afternoon. In 
the night there was trouble around those 
woods somewhere among the menagerie, and 
51 




52 



Florida Fancies 



the scream of a wildcat in particular annoyed 
me. 

In the morning I started out to hunt his 
"catship," and finally located him in a tree. I 
had two charges of buckshot in my gun and 
the bulk of one of them made that animal 
howl, but he hung grimly to the tree. 

I raised my gun to let him have the second 
barrel when the sharp crack of a rifle-shot 
sounded and the wildcat fell almost at 
my feet. 




I turned and walking towards me was a six- 
foot athletic specimen of a man. 

''Excuse me," he remarked, "but that fellow 
has been bothering my sleep for some time and 
I thought I ought to have a chance at him." 

I could see in a second he was n't a "Cracker" 
or a Floridian, either. He wore a corduroy 
hunting-suit, demonstrating a tailor's tape-line 



Florida Fancies 53 

and a tailor's tact. Then he shook hands and 
introduced himself with the grace and ease of 
a man of the world accustomed to good society. 

"Come over to my bungalow," he said; 
** breakfast is about ready, and as a New Yorker 
you are doubly welcome." 

What is there in this wide world of ours that 
rubber-stamps New York or Chicago upon a 
man? I had settled it in my mind that he was 
from the metropolis when he broke out with 
the invitation. 

"What in the world are you doing here? " I 
queried. 

"Oh, it 's a long story; let 's wait till after 
we eat," he remarked. 

By this time we had reached a sort of a clear- 
ing on the edge of a little lake secreted away in 
the woods. It was truly a romantic spot and 
one any Bertha Clay girl would gush over. 

In among the stately pines on the edge of 
the lake was his "bungalow." It was a two- 
room cottage built of pine logs, the roof 
thatched with palms. An attempt at orna- 
mentation had been given to the structure 
both inside and out, and it had a very pictu- 
resque effect. 

There was a small hut back of it, and 
I could see two or three men around a 
big gasoline stove seemingly busy preparing 



54 Florida Fancies 

breakfast. He called to one of them and sent 
him after the body of the wildcat and to another, 
who was evidently his valet, to bring fresh 
water and towels. The room we entered was 
filled with evidences of refinement and good 
taste. Here and there were scattered articles 
of virtu and of value, and on the walls were a 
few very good water-colors and a sprinkling of 
etchings. 

Over the big open fireplace was a deer's 
head mounted on a panel, and above were a 
pair of racing sculls tied with a broad blue 
ribbon. ''Yes," he said, answering my gaze, 
"I was in Yale in '92." 

The breakfast was served by the valet and it 
was as neat and natty a meal as I ever sat down 
to. The coffee was delicious, the omelette was 
a dream, and the fresh rolls fit for a king. I 
registered myself there for a week at "Dick's " 
urgent invitation, and we got to be very good 
friends. He showed me a creek I could get the 
boat through, and we tied her to an improvised 
dock his men had made in front of the hut, 
which he had named "Wildcat Cabin." 

It was the end of the week before he grew 
communicative as to his hermitage, miles away 
from all sign or sound of man. One night just 
after supper we sat out on the bank watching 
the fish as they jumped out of the water, I 



Florida Fancies 55 

was discussing a crenie de menthe while he was 
sipping coffee. I had noticed that although 
he could mix any kind of drink from a Man- 
hattan to a" Jim Rickey," still he never tasted 
the products of his skill. 

"Do you know," he remarked abruptly, 
"that if I was to drink that green stuff it would 
make me sick as a dog? " 

"Why, what 's the trouble? " I queried. 

"Why, old man," — for he had grown as 
familiar as that in the few days, — "I '11 tell 
you, and that 's just what brings me here. 

"You know after I left college I entered my 
father's brokerage firm as assistant manager. 
Of course, I had had my fling at Yale, but not 
more of a 'throw ' than most young men, and 
I was still in with the boys' set at New York. 
You know what that is. It 's a case of two or 
three weeks on a friend's yacht in Summer and 
a week's or ten days' time in the Adirondacks in 
the Fall. 

"Then there 's the summer-hotel trip, the 
about-town trips, the clubs, and the stag 
parties. I don't think I indulged more freely 
than the ordinary, but the 'governor,' who is 
one of the old school prohibition pushers, gave 
me a very large case of conversation many a 
time. But then he always made up for it the 
next day with an addition to my allowance, 



56 



Florida Fancies 



and I never treasured up much of what the 
dear old fellow said. 

"One night, however, — it 's just six months 
ago to-night, by the way, — I came home for the 
first time in my life a little bit 'shaky.' I had 
been to a supper given by a very close friend of 
mine who was going to be married the next 
day. He belonged to my college society, and 
was in the Yale crew with me. Naturally, we 
had a pretty jolly time talking over old scrapes 
and college wrinkles. 

''And, as luck would have it, 
the ' governor ' had had a migh- 
ty bad day in Wall Street, and 
his temper was hardly sweeten- 
ed by a two or three hours' 
walk over the carpet while wait- 
ing for me. Heavens, when he 
saw my condition did n't he rip 
me up the back though ! If I 
had been the lowest of 
the low sewer drunk- 
ards he could n't have 
piled it on thicker. 

" 'Now,' he said, 

in conclusion, 'I 'm 

-vj I u not going to have you 

^"^^f around New York in 

' '^ this beastly condition. 




Florida Fancies 57 

Take this check, fill it out with what you want 
for a year, then go and get out into the woods 
somewhere away from everybody and be a 
man again.* 

" You could have blown me over with a fan- 
wave before, but this rather straightened me 
and I tried to argue the point. But the more 
I tried the worse I was off. 'No,' he finished. 
' Do what I say. Fill your mind with good 
substantial reading like Dickens and Thackeray. 
Get some real instruction into your poor be- 
fuddled noddle. Read that great masterpiece, 
Lorna Doone, and above all imitate and emulate 
the great John Ridd and the heroes of the old- 
time writers.' 

"Well," continued Dick, '*I left for the 
West the next day without again seeing the 
'governor ' and I finally drifted to Florida and 
here. Somehow I could n't get those last 
words out of my mind, and they kept running 
through me like one of those 'ad ' couplets you 
see in an elevated train. ' Emulate and imitate 
John Ridd, Dickens and Thackeray, and chase 
their heroes with an example.' 

"So I bought every copy of these people's 
works I could find in sight. I bought them in 
all kinds of bindings and in all kinds of shapes. 
When I got here first I had half a ton of 
them. But, ' ' — and Dick gazed reflectively out 



58 



Florida Fancies 



over the lake, — "they're all feeding the fish 
down there now. 

"I started in with the great John Ridd in 
Lorna Doonc. I read about him in four or five 
kinds of bindings. Then I started in to emu- 
late him. He was put forth as a notoriously 
sober man, and I noticed that his favorite drink 
was old ale. Then I sent to town for a cask 
of it and hunted through the book to see what 
John's limit was. 

"Great Golden Gates alive! As a moderate 
drinker, he limited 
himself to half a gal- 
lon before breakfast 
and about a gallon for 
the rest of the day. 
What in Heaven's 
name did the gover- 
nor mean by asking 
me to imitate such a 
drunkard as that for? 
I shut my 
teeth and 
sailed in. 
Now I 'd 
never been 
accustomed 
to taking 
a drink be- 




Florida Fancies 59 

fore breakfast and that half-gallon business 
was too much for me. It spoiled my ap- 
petite for all day and I got thin, restless, and 
nervous. 

"After a week I gave that up and took to 
Thackeray. I noticed that his heroes seemed 
to favor old clarets and old burgundies. Thack- 
eray was, if you remember, a stickler for the 
age of his claret. So I sent to New York and 
got as near to his post-mark as I could and 
waded in ; but there again I was dazed. Half 
a dozen bottles at a sitting seemed to be easy 
work with them, and the rest of the stuff 
they drank as 'chasers' I suppose would 
give the toughest Blackwell's Isle 'bum' the 
tremens. 

"So I let Thackeray go to the bottom of the 
pond and find what he did n't seem to use in 
his books— water. Then I waded into Dickens, 
but it was worse than ever. The Lord must 
have given those 'old timers ' brass stomachs, 
copper rivetted and iron shingled. By this 
time I was disgusted and discouraged with the 
old masters altogether and ready to give up. 
'There must be something the matter,' I said 
to myself. 'It can't be possible that my 
stomach is weak. ' 

"Finally, one day I struck an idea. The 
trouble was that I did n't eat the same food 



6o Florida Fancies 

they did. I must not alone drink with them, 
but I must eat also. 

"There happpened to be one book of Thack- 
eray's left, TJic Four Georges, and I hunted 
through for a sample meal. I found it on page 
216. This is it : 

" 'When Lord Sparkish, Tom Neverout, and 
Colonel Alwit, the immortal personages of 
Swift's polite conversation, came to breakfast 
with my Lady Smart at eleven o'clock in the 
morning, my Lord Smart was absent at the 
levee. His Lordship was at home to dinner at 
three o'clock to receive; and we may sit down 
to this meal like the Barmecide and see the 
fops of the last century before us. Seven of 
them sat down to dinner and were joined by a 
country baronet who told them they kept court 
hours. These persons of fashion began their 
dinner with a sirloin of beef, a fish, a shoulder 
of veal, and a tongue. My Lady Smart carved 
the sirloin, my Lady Answerall helped the fish, 
and the gallant Colonel cut the shoulder of 
veal. All made a considerable inroad on the 
sirloin and the shoulder of veal with the excep- 
tion of Sir John, who had no appetite, having 
already partaken of a beefsteak and two mugs 
of ale, besides a tankard of March beer, as soon 
as he got out of bed. They drank claret, 
which the master of the house said should 



Florida Fancies 

always be drunk after 
fish ; and my Lord 
Smart particularly rec- 
ommended some excel- 
lent cider to my Lord 
Sparkish, which occasioned 
some brilliant remarks from that 
nobleman. When the host called 
for wine, he nodded to one or 
other of his guests and said, — 
"Tom Neverout, my service 
to you." 

. . . " 'Wine and small 
beer were drunk 
second course. And when the 
Colonel called for beer he 
called the butler Friend, and 
asked whether the beer was good 
Various jocular remarks passed from 
the gentlefolks to the servants. 

'After the puddings, sweet and 
black, the fritters and soup, came the third 
course, of which the chief dish was a hot 
venison pasty, which was put before Lord 
Smart, and carved by that nobleman. Be- 
sides the pasty there was a hare, a rabbit, ^^ 
some pigeons, partridges, a goose, and a 
ham. Beer and wine were freely imbibed 
during this course, the gentlemen always 



during the 




62 Florida Fancies 

pledging somebody with every glass which 
they drank; and by this time the conversation 
between Tom Neverout and Miss Notable had 
grown so brisk and lively that the Derbyshire 
baronet began to think the young gentlewoman 
was Tom's sweetheart, on which Miss remarked 
that she loved Tom like pie. After the goose, 
some gentlemen took a dram of brandy, "which 
was very good and wholesome," Sir John said. 
And now having had a tolerably substantial 
dinner, honest Lord Smart bade the butler 
bring up the great tankard full of October to 
Sir John. The great tankard was passed from 
hand to hand and mouth to mouth, but when 
pressed by the noble host upon the gallant 
Tom Neverout, he said, **No, faith, my Lord, 
I like your wine, and won't put a damper upon 
a gentleman. Your honor's claret is good 
enough for me." And so, the dinner over, the 
host said, "Hang saving, bring us up ha'porth 
of cheese." 

' ' * The cloth was now taken away and a bottle 
of burgundy was set down, of which the ladies 
were invited to partake before they went to 
their tea. When they withdrew the gentlemen 
promised to join them in an hour. Fresh bot- 
tles were brought, the "dead men," meaning 
the empty bottles, removed, and you hear, 
"John, bring clean glasses," my Lord Smart 



Florida Fancies 63 

said, on which the gallant Colonel Alwit said, 
"I '11 keep my glass, for wine is the best liquor 
to wash glasses in." ' 

"Just think," continued Dick, "those are 
the people my father wanted me to emulate. 
I read that menu over again, studied it front 
and back, did about seven sums in arithmetic 
with it, and decided to go out of the emulating 
business and save what was left of my constitu- 
tion. I had n't written a line home, but a week 
ago I mustered up nerve and wrote the gov- 
ernor, explaining matters in detail. I asked 
him if he wanted to kill me. I pointed out 
that it was somewhat unfair to my stomach to 
try and test it that way. Then, in closing, I 
sent him page 216 of TJie Four Georges, and 
asked him to bring some friends and I 'd get 
up that meal for him if he wanted it, but that I 
would draw the line, myself, as I was rather 
particular." 

Just as Dick finished, the valet, who had been 
sent to Leesburg, returned with a dispatch. 
Dick opened it, smiled, and without a word 
handed it to me. It was surely laconic enough. 
It said : 

Richard Travers, 

Leesburg, Fla. 

Damn your dinner. Come home. 

R. N. Travers. 



64 



Florida Fancies 



**I don't know," said Dick, as we turned in 
for the night, ''but what after all a course of 
Thackeray would beat all the Keeleys on top 
of earth." 



CHAPTER VIII 



f 



jNROLL a spool from the 
film of memory; there it 
is : a sea-green sky, flying, 
fluttering, fleecy, vapory 
clouds, like the filtering of 
a fog. Over all the full of 
a moon, rayless, but filling 
land and water, sky and 
clouds with its radiance. 
In that memory's nega- 
tive two men stand on the 
shore of a lake — a lake up- 
on whose waters for miles 



tW 



65 



66 Florida Fancies 

from either shore floats the long-stemmed, 
broad-leaved pond-lily, the open water seem- 
ingly but a narrow strip, but for miles in 
width it is clear water. Its banks are bor- 
dered with clumps of Florida cypress with 
here and there a long stretch of palm trees, 
their tall tops reaching moonwards, as still as 
the * ' eternal silence of the hills. * ' Then , amidst 
the lilies and the lettuce were little brown, 
floating islands anchored firmly by a vegetable 
cable, looking for all the world like the arm- 
thick rope of a fishing-bank's schooner. Even 
the big yellow buds of the pond flowers had 
closed their petals in a seemingly eternal sleep. 

Clear-proofed in the picture is my companion, 
but how different from my boyhood's dream of 
a trapper. Short, chunky, with a long, thick 
beard reaching to his waist, and dressed in a 
suit of patched overalls and a long overcoat, 
he shattered all my youthful ideals. Then, to 
climax the costume, he wore a broad-brimmed 
battered old straw hat and a pair of $1.87 Irish 
brogans. 

Well, Sam, ' ' I said, ' ' I guess you 're wrong ; 
there '11 be no concert to-night." 

''Time enough," he answered grimly; "it 's 
not nine yet." 

Silence again, then from across the lake five 
miles away a sound like the mooing of a calf 



Florida Fancies 67 

broke out. Louder and louder it grew, and 
then it died away amid the gray moss of the 
cypress. A triumphant chuckle from Sam, and 
then an answering bellow almost at our feet, 
sent Florida chills chasing up and down my 
back. It seemed so weird and uncanny that it 
made my teeth rattle. 

"That 's the bull answering that cow over 
there," whispered Sam. **Now listen." 

Then started a chorus that would defy de- 
scription and beat all the Wagner bands in ex- 
istence. The call had started and from every 
little island, from every little cove, an answer 
came. Bellow after bellow resounded, and it 
seemed as if the lake was full of alligators. It 
was an unearthly and never-to-be-forgotten 
concert. After twenty minutes it stopped as 
suddenly as it began and peace and the moon 
reigned. 

Camp and camp followers had all been shifted. 
To a lay mind like mine it 's a very good policy 
when you go bird-hunting to take a bird-dog 
instead of a deer or a coon canine. Why, then, 
is n't it just as good sense when you go alliga- 
tor-hunting to take an alligator-man? 

Every man has his specialty, just the same as 
dogs, and there 's not a dog "fouring, " if I 
may use the term, who has n't a specialty. 
Now Collins, the former guide, was the best 



68 



Florida Fancies 



deer-hunter Florida ever saw. But put him 
against an aUigator and all his cunning and 
sagacity went to pot. 

With Sam Davis water-hunting was his light 
and life. Two would sum up all the deer he 
ever killed, but his living for 
years had been made on 
^ator and other hides, 
for land-hunting, he 
disliked it, and when 
the camp pan- 
try was deplet- 
ed he 'd rather 
row miles after 
ducks than walk 
three hundred 
yards for quail. 
To the unin- 
itiated it may 
seem that alliga- 
tor-hunting is 
rather tame 
sport. But let 
me tell you it is 
n't. Most men 
who know the 
differencewould 
rather face a 
hundred wound- 




Florida Fancies 69 

ed deer than one shot-tickled ten-foot 'gator. 
Why? Because the deer will invariably run, 
and Mr. 'Gator is mighty liable not to. And 
a spice of danger helps the sauce of any sport. 

Well, to return from the digression and the 
lake front to the camp. Sam made a mental 
map of those "bellows " so as to "place them " 
next day, and bidding Pete, the colored cook, 
call us early, we turned in. 

The next day was an ideal day for 'gators. 
The sun shone bright and there was just enough 
wind stirring to rustle the lilies and the lettuce 
and help drown the noise of the boat as it was 
threaded through them. A little light sixteen- 
foot flat-bottomed skiff was our boat — built to 
a point at both ends, and not over three feet 
wide at the centre. Thin cypress was its make- 
up, and fifty pounds was its weight. This last 
item, of course, was the most essential, as it 
had to be paddled in and out among the vege- 
tation and the water-passes without a breath 
of noise. 

For two hours we moved through devious 
watery ways, hugging the banks as closely as 
possible, without seeing anything but "signs." 
Then, from my shooting seat in front I turned 
to Sam, and saw his eyes glued to a tussock a 
quarter of a mile ahead. No word or motion 
outside of the silent sweep of the paddle came 



70 Florida Fancies 

from him. A sudden lifting of the eyebrows, 
that was all. 

I looked and looked again, but could see 
nothing, while onward we slowly crawled. 
Then the waving grasses parted a little on the 
tussock, and the black-knobbed line of an alli- 
gator's back showed. It was hard to tell 
whether he was asleep or "sunning," as the 
head was turned from us. 

Nearer and nearer we got, until at sixty 
yards the gun came to my shoulder; my feet 
spread to cling to the sides of the boat and 
steady her. I ran along that alligator's "top 
line note" with my sight and held it back of the 
head. A turtle turtled with a noisy flop from 
the bank. Mr. 'Gator moved forward and I 
let him have five drams and three quarters of a 
dozen of double-B shot. It stunned him for a 
second, but like a lightning flash he was in the 
water, and my second barrel had missed him 
clean and clear. 

And so it went on all that day with only a 
half-hour interval for a lay off in the pine 
woods and lunch. But with no better success. 
Fate, shooting, or some hoodoo was against 
us. We returned to camp empty-boated. 

For two days more we did that self-same 
thing. And the wonder of it was we could n't 
either of us tell where the fault lay. It was n't 



Florida Fancies 71 

in the quantity of alligators surely, for in that 
time we had square fair shots at no less than 
twenty-five of the brutes. It was n't in my 
shooting entirely, for I had thrown down my 
gun twice in the last two days and for half a 
day Sam had poured and pounded shot into 
them. 

The third night I had fairly made up my 
mind to quit, but the little English blood still 
left in me fought that resolve. We both lay 
gloomily gazing at the fire, mentally studying 
over every shot and the situation. We felt 
sure we had three or four dead alligators in 
that lake. Two of them we had rowed up to, 
thinking to slide them into the boat, but both 
of them had life enough left to flop off into the 
water and get away. Then, if they were very 
nearly dead, they would still cling to the bot- 
tom, and it would be three or four days before 
they rose to the surface, and their skins would 
then be practically useless. 

If you want to get an alligator, it must be a 
clean, cold kill; leave him enough breath to 
move and he '11 beat you out. He may recover 
in five minutes and if you don't take your axe 
and cut his spinal bone in two before that time, 
you '11 have trouble on your hands. I have 
seen with my own eyes an alligator, five hours 
after he was to all appearances dead, and after 



72 



Florida Fancies 




the commercial part of his clothing- 
had been removed, break a man's back 
with one blow of his tail. 

Alligators, if they have attained a 
length of nine feet or over, are apt to 
be very ugly members of watery so- 
ciety, if wounded. And there are 
many instances on record of their at- 
tacking boats forty and even fifty feet 
long, just because there are a few 
men on board, and the alligators are 
shy a meal. Old alligator-hunters, 
men who have been in the business for years, 
rarely if ever shoot at a big alligator. They 
let him slide for two reasons. One is that 
it is dangerous to attack them, as they are 
hard to kill and when wounded are liable to 
make a wild rush for the shooter, and then 
there 's trouble ahead. The other reason is 
that an alligator's skin depreciates in commer- 
cial value after it reaches seven feet in size. 

A seven-foot skin is worth a dollar to any 
trapper, while a twelve-foot 'gator's hide brings 
only thirty-five or forty cents. As the trapper 
has to pay the freight and as it takes three or 
four times as long to bother with them, the ex- 
perienced Florida alligator-farmer is generally 
rather shy on them. 

And so we lay and mused. 



Florida Fancies 



73 



"Sam," I said finally, ''didn't you tell me 
some fairy story about a gang of trappers com- 
ing down this way somewhere last summer and 
getting over two hundred skins out of a lake, 
cleaning it out? ' 

"Yes," he remarked moodily, "but this ain't 
the lake, because it ain't cleaned out." 

Just then, as if to emphasize the remark, a 
low moaning sound with a distinct quavering 
note of pain in it megaphoned across the lake. 
"There," said Sam, "there's that big fellow 
near the cypress that you put a charge into at 
twenty yards." 

"Sam," I said, "I '11 tell you just what. 
Have you noticed that all the alligators we 've 
seen in this lake have been big ones? This is 
the lake that 'gang' cleaned up, and they 've 
left us the top-notch lot." 

And so we decided it was, and 
changed ammunition and tactics. I 
had a regular elephant rifle with me, 
a big-bore Sharps 40-50, and I 
cleaned it up. The first alligator 
we sighted the next morning was, 
as we made it a hundred yards away, 
over twelve feet long. He was 
"sunning," with his head down and 
only the knobby ridge of his back 
showing. We got up within twenty 




74 Florida Fancies 

yards of him and Sam laid down his paddle 
and picked up his gun. It was a hard shot, 
as I had to guess at the place, but I let go, and 
Sam followed with both barrels. For a second 
he was stunned, then with a lightning jump he 
was in the water. 

"Look out!" Sam yelled as he seized the 
paddle, "there he comes." And sure enough 
the water was bubbling like a boiling spring as 
he rose to the surface. Sam, meanwhile, was 
backing away for life, while I stood up in the 
boat, ready with the elephant bore. 

The 'gator looked as big as a steam yacht to 
me, but not half so pretty. After gauging 
the situation, he made a vicious rush. Then I 
seemed to freeze to granite. I knew that one 
blow of his tail would smash our boat to splin- 
ters, and once in the water one of us, at least, 
was doomed. 

On he came, lashing the water to a soapy 
foam. I kept my gun well down and at ten 
yards I let go. I heard the crack of his break- 
ing skull as the bullet went straight and true 
between the eyes ; then a slight shock that 
tumbled me to my seat, and it was only a dead 
alligator, and he lay floating feet upwards to 
the smiling sun. 

We were satisfied that day, and we tied a 
rope to him and towed him to camp, three 



Florida Fancies 75 

miles away. He measured twelve and a half 
feet long. My first bullet had entered his 
back, and even at that distance had not pene- 
trated but a few inches. Then it had flattened 
out like a piece of putty. Sam's buckshot had 
simply angered him. At twenty yards, with 
five drams of powder, not one had gone through 
his skin. Slight marks were there, showing 
that the shots had been true. That was all. 

For two weeks we followed up this campaign, 
and at the end of that time we had thirty skins, 
not one of them under eight feet. In that 
time we had seen all the alligator life possible. 
It was the latter part of February, their breed- 
ing season, when they all come out from their 
winter naps and face the world again. We had 
seen a cow alligator fighting to the last, de- 
fending its young from a hungry father alli- 
gator ; we had seen and watched their clumsy 
love-making ; and, greatest of all, we had been 
fascinated for hours by a terrific battle between 
two giant specimens for the possession of a fair, 
but I 'm afraid a rather frail, female, as, while 
the two were fighting, another carried her off. 
We had no more adventures until the last trasfic 
one. But that 's food for another chapter. 





HIRTY CENTS, that was his name ; 
at least, that was the best I could 
do for him, poor fellow. He was a 
ittle Seminole Indian boy who had 
strolled into our camp way down 
among the everglades, where I had 
been hunting deer. The boy was 
short and slim, with wavy black hair and, for a 
wonder, a clean face. Young as he was, and 
although he did n't own a gun, he was the best 
bird-shot I ever saw. Pete, the cook, could n't 
fire a gun without shutting his eyes, so I asked 
the boy to come along with us for the hunt 
and keep us in birds and rabbits. 

The Indian camp wasn't far away; a jug of 
**jig water" gained the consent of the chief, 
and ''Thirty Cents" completed the quartet 
necessary for our alligator hunt. 
76 



Florida Fancies ^^ 

And he proved to be a valuable acquisition. 
Trained from his babyhood to woodland, 
tramped since his childhood from place to 
place, taught to hunt before he was ten, he 
knew the book of nature and the map of 
Southern Florida from A to Z. I asked him 
his name, but it was too strong for me. It 
seemed to commence at T and then speculate 
among the alphabet until it got all the letters, 
and then double up and climax on S. So, as a 
compromise, I called him * ' Thirty Cents. " He 
smiled, and "it went." The boy became quite 
attached to me before the last day of our alliga- 
tor hunt. I told Sam the next morning to take 
the launch, as the Indians were then camped 
twenty miles away, and find out whether I 
could take the boy North for the summer. 
"Meanwhile," I said, ''I 'm going over to get 
that big 'gator, with the help of the boy." 

Said Sam: "He's over fourteen foot long; 
he 's wounded, and he 's a bad one." 

How I wish now I had been wise and heeded 
his advice ! 

My heart was set on that 'gator. It was one 
I had shot at three times. Twice I had missed 
him, but in the first day's shoot I knew I had 
nailed him with buckshot. I had had a first- 
class chance to "size him up" and I knew 
that fourteen feet, at least, was his measure. 



78 



Florida Fancies 




He was the king-pin • 
of all his tribe in the 
lake. So, full of ~^ 

hope, we set out that afternoon, disdaining to 
bother with any other, but rowing straight to 
his island home. I knew that if he was n't 
there, he would come up not over fifty or a hun- 
dred yards from there, as he was wounded and 
must have air. At any other time than the breed- 
ing season . alligators are very migratory. At 
night they are liable to be twenty-five miles away 
from their haunts of the morning, and it 's not 
unusual for them to travel all summer this way. 
So for two solid hours we lay hidden like two 
Moseses in the bulrushes, but no 'gator. Then, 
looking back a mile away across the lake, we 
noticed a long black streak coming toward us. 
Nearer and nearer it came. At three hundred 
yards I could see he wasn't my meat, as he 
was only about ten feet long, so I shook my 
head at the Indian. 



Florida Fancies 79 

He nodded and whispered low: "Him she 
'gator, coming to meet big one." 

That alligator came within twenty feet of 
our boat. She saw us plainly, stopped for a 
second, and her big eyes rolled over us and our 
outfit. But we sat immovable, and she moved 
on and climbed the tussock not over forty feet 
away, and, after looking us over again, actually 
went to sleep. 

Another half hour I was cramped and stiff 
and sore, and had just made up my mind to 
move, when a little bubble came spouting up 
to the top of the lake, not far from the boat. 
The boy's eyes glistened, and he pointed. 
Then a rush of bubbles, and both of our guns 
were sighted at the spot. Just a broad brown 
snout — and then two shots rang out simul- 
taneously. 

There was no whispering then. "Get out ! " 
I yelled; "we 've missed him." The Indian 
grasped the situation in a second. The bow of 
the canoe was on the tussock, and if he came 
for us we had no sea room. 

We had no more than backed into the lake 
than, with an onward rush, he was at us. The 
Indian's eyes stuck out like glass ones in a 
stuffed figure, but he deftly turned the boat 
aside, and the 'gator just brushed us. I fired, 
but missed him again. Then ensued one of 



So Florida Fancies 

the strangest sights I ever saw. Down he 
went, with a whirl of foam, and was up in a 
minute, forty feet away. He made another 
rush, but in a direct line from us. This time 
we both fired, and down he went again. He 
stayed down fully five minutes. Up he came, 
with a swirl and a dash, jumping straight in the 
air, seven feet of him, or half his body, clearly 
out of water. Crack again went the guns, but 
he was so like lightning that there was hardly 
hope of hitting him in a vital spot. He whirled 
and whizzed about in a frenzy of rage, but 
instead of rushing towards us again, made for 
the island, tearing it half in two. 

*'Him blind," yelled the Indian, as we fired 
and loaded again. The first charge of buck- 
shot had evidently put out both his eyes. 
This time he stayed down fifteen minutes, the 
water for a twenty-foot circle over him covered 
with bubbles, showing that he was hard hit and 
breathing rag-time. ' * Thirty Cents" evidently 
got tired of waiting, for he paddled to the spot, 
and reaching over the side of the boat, pushed 
down an oar and prodded him with it. 

In a second the scene was changed. With a 
cannon-ball rush the 'gator had come to the 
surface directly at the side of the boat, and 
with one slap had broken it to pieces, and we 
were flopping in the water. 



Florida Fancies 8i 

I remember how my life seemed to biograph 
itself before me. Then I struck out for shore, 
the Indian a few yards ahead swimming for life 
itself. I saw him turn his head to see that I 
was safe, and then he yelled something, but I 
could n't catch it. I heard the alligator breath- 
ing hard close behind and then I thought my 
time had come. 

Then all the stories Sam had told of how the 
beasts all preferred black meat to white, came 
to me. I gruesomely wondered in that short 
moment whether it was the same with red, and 
whether he would pass me by. We had gained 
a little on the alligator by this time, as being 
blind he had to be guided by the noise. But 
now he had straightened out and as he was 
headed directly for me and as the shore was 
five hundred yards away, I knew there was no 
hope. A sudden thought struck me. I 
stopped my noisy swimming, lay over on my 
back and floated, moving enough to get me out 
of line. 

It was none too quick. The alligator rushed 
on, almost brushing me as he passed. I heard 
a yell of agony, and "Thirty Cents" had 
crossed the ford to the happy hunting-grounds 
in the forest of the great beyond. 

I swam to one of the tussocks, and by lying 
flat it held me up. Still I was n't safe. The 



82 Florida Fancies 

alligator might come back, but I judged if let 
alone he 'd had enough. For an hour I lay 
there; the sun set and darkness came on. I 
was wet through and shivering with the cold, 
for be it known all nights in Florida are chilly. 
But the welcome chug ! chug ! of the Lela Bell 
soon came across the waters, and half an hour 
later I was gazing sullenly and moodily into 
the camp-fire. 

Pete, the cook, sobbed like a woman in hys- 
terics, but Sam took it more quietly. An un- 
expressed purpose was in both our minds. 
"Yes," he said, voicing my own thoughts, 
"we '11 have to build a raft, cover it with rushes, 
lay near, and catch that cuss." 

That night we built the raft and the next 
morning found us close to the place again. It 
was a clean live shot I made this time, and 
signalling for Pete with the launch we towed 
him back upon the raft. 

Pete's joy was as hysterical as his sorrow. 
He danced around the carcass, sticking knives 
and fire-brands into it, yelling at the same time 
all the cuss words in his vocabulary. In the 
afternoon we skinned him and counted six bul- 
lets that had passed through the skin and flat- 
tened just inside. He measured fourteen feet 
ten inches from nose to tip of tail and must 
have weighed nearly eight hundred pounds. 



Florida Fancies S^ 

After supper, while Sam and I were packing 
a few things preparatory to a run to the Indian 
camp the next day, to convey the news and 
explain matters, colored Pete came rushing 
towards us brandishing a knife in one hand 
and holding part of a coat in the other. 

"Say, Massa," he said, "ain't you all 'uns 
goin' to bury him? " 

"Bury that alligator, you fool," I said; "no, 
let the buzzards have him." 

"No, no, boss," he said. "Bury Marse 
Thirty Cents. I dun cut dat 'gator's belly out 
and he 's in there. Here 's his coat." 

Sam and I looked at each other and both 
shuddered. It was more than we had bargained 
for, and we told Pete to go ahead while we got 
a coffin ready. Two big cracker boxes length- 
ened out made his last bed. We tore the tent 
to pieces to cover it and pad it. Then with 
burnt wood we made some paint and gave it 
the conventional color. 

By this time Pete had got through and 
brought us all that was left of the boy's shat- 
tered, bruised, and broken body. We placed 
him reverently in the box, and at midnight we 
buried him. 

Darkness was over all. By the light of 
pitch-pine torches, we placed him in a grave 
under a cypress tree. 



84 Florida Fancies 

It was two days afterward that we came back 
from the Indian camp. Chief ' ' Spotted Face, ' ' 
as I had nicknamed him, grunted a Httle, but a 
large-sized jug of "jig water " and a few bottles 
of the same consistency seemed to satisfy 
his scruples, and all the comment he made 
was: "Boy big fool to monkey with big 
'gator." 

Meanwhile Pete had not been idle. With 
all a negro's love of the spectacular he had, 
with the help of a hundred buzzards, cleaned 
all the meat from that alligator's carcass and, 
bracing it up with a stout sapling, had placed 
it as a monument at the head of the grave of 
poor "Thirty Cents." 

Fastened to the bones with a wire was a big 
placard reading : 



HERE 'S THIRTY CENTS 



HE WAS A GOOD INDIAN 



This is the alligator's bones that killed him. 



The grey moss of the cypress reaches to the 
ground, the whispering wind of a Florida day 




PETE'S SIX-FOOTER 



Florida Fancies 



85 



sways it gently to and fro, brushing ever and 
anon that ghastly shaft, murmuring a requiem 
as plaintive and melancholy as ever was crooned 
o'er buried man. 

And so we left him as the day broke. 




=-^^-. 




tk^di '^^^'^^^ 



CHAPTER X 



In the Piney Woods, 

Gum Swamp, Florida. 

THE dawn of a new day is just breaking, the 
thick mist from the river at our feet rises 
Hke a cloud, and the drip, drip, drip of it from 
the pine trees overhead forenotices us of an- 
other sunny, summery " Juney " day. 

The red tint of the east grows stronger and 
the glare of the camp-fire grows pale. You 
can have your ten inches of snow, but give me 
a Florida sunrise in midwinter. A few palms 
and a deerskin for covering were all that com- 
prised a bed last night, and I could n't have slept 
more luxuriously if I 'd been the Astor tramp. 
86 



Florida Fancies 



87 



Then there 's a growl from the coterie of dogs 
as the guide stretches himself preparatory to 
the work of another day. With an exception 
as to color, "Lige" Collins is the beau ideal 
of one of J. Fenimore Cooper's hunters and 
heroes. "Lige," however, is a very black 
brunette, as every inch of his six-foot form is 
colored. He has the reputation, and I guess 
he 's earned it, too, of having shot more deer 
than any other man in Florida. 

It was n't, how- 
ever, for that rep- 
u t a t i o n that I 
''cottoned " to 
him. It was to try 
a new and novel 
way of hunting 
the kings and 
queens of the 
Florida woods. 
And that is to 
' * slow trail" a 
deer. And though 
as a novelty it may 
be all right, still 
as a steady diet I 
don't think I rate 
it high myself, and 
after you 've 




88 



Florida Fancies 




walked forty miles a 

Jiff^Xi day through woods 

^>VX^i) ^^^^^S^ ^"^ swamps, you '11 
^^-^m. ■ Xy<////^//. /. . be Qf jYjy opinion, I 

think. 

Hitherto I 've 
hunted deer in every 
kind of way except 
this * ' slow trail ' ' pro- 
cess, and I am willing 
to say after a three- 
days' trial any other 
"old way " will suit 
me after this. The 
"chief cook and bottle-washer" in a hunt of 
this kind is the dog, and it is a safe thing to 
assert that there 's not another dog like Mary 
Jane in all Florida, and it 's doubtful if there 's 
another "slow trail " dog in Florida anyway. 

Mary Jane, or "Sleepy Jane," as I call 
her, is the most forlorn specimen of a pup 
you ever saw. She 's got a semi-paresis, half 
"dopey" look that gives you an idea she 's 
too tired to live, but does n't want to take the 
trouble to die. As to color, she 's a sort of 
cross between a liver-pad and a bilious pill. 
Then, for a change, though she *s as skinny as 
a skeleton, still all her bones don't show, as 
half her ribs have been punched in by a deer, 



Florida Fancies 89 

and there 's a lot of innocuous desuetude on 
one side of her body. Then she got mixed up 
with another deer who deprived her of part of 
her interior department and the string stitches 
the guide sewed her up with show for a foot 
along the other side of her body. Take her 
all in all and with one broken leg, her chances 
for a prize in a beauty show would n't be high. 

But that dog would fool you. She certainly 
gave me a higher regard for **doganity, " if I 
may coin the word. As every sportsman 
knows, the usual way to hunt deer with dogs 
is for them to "open out " and yell their lungs 
out the minute you strike a trail, and then you 
follow as close as possible on horseback. 

But Jane's work was different. At seven 
o'clock the first morning we struck a deer trail. 
Jane did n't even wink an eyelash. She just 
stood there waiting for us to come up, looking 
for all the world as if she were going to sleep. 
Then for five mortal hours we followed that 
"pup." Over hill and dale, through wood and 
swamp we chased, crossing, turning, "back 
tracking " at the whim of what I made up my 
mind was a cur. At twelve o'clock, with 
every bone in my body aching, with a brown 
colored thirst, and a gun that seemed to weigh 
a hundred pounds, it struck me that I was the 
victim of some alleged joke. Mary Jane, who 



90 Florida Fancies 

had kept just twenty yards ahead of us all the 
time, waited as if for us to come up. There 
was a little bit of a wag to her tail and she 
did n't move on as we got up to her. 

"There's the deer," whispered the guide. 

Then he walked over toward a clump of 
palmettos and for a second my breath stopped 
short, for a big buck jumped out and was 
twenty yards away in two jumps. Then I 
caught myself and at forty yards I stopped his 
capers with a load of double-0 buckshot. 

The crack of the gun, and what a transfor- 
mation ! ''Jack," a big black hound that had 
been kept back all the time, made a leap for- 
ward and Mary Jane was with him. There 
was a combined howl and away they went. 
What was my consternation to see that deer 
jump away with a sort of a forked lightning 
gait. At a hundred yards I let him have an- 
other barrel, but was wide of the mark. 

By this time the dogs had settled down to 
business and not a howl was heard. In a min- 
ute they were out of sight and hearing. For 
two miles we tracked that deer by the blood 
on the palmettos, but it was hours afterwards 
before we finally heard the dogs, who had him 
cornered in the swamp. For a Florida deer, he 
was a big one, weighing about one hundred and 
eighty pounds. 



Florida Fancies 91 

That was the longest trail we had, the rest 
of them being from two to three hours. But 
"Sleepy Jane " never made a miss. Once she 
started on the scent, she never left it till she 
struck the deer. It was a pretty good camp, 
as we brought away six deer. Of quail and 
duck we shot only enough to keep the camp, 
though there was another camping party who 
boasted of a hundred and sixty quail in one 
day. As they could n't eat them, and as they 
would spoil before they could sell them, I can 
hardly see the sense of it. 



These Florida fancies are fleeting forms of 
the fading camp-fire now. Florida has started 
a new chapter in her history, and to many its 
future looks dark and drear. 

''The Freeze" is now the book-mark for 
every Floridian. Everything dates from or 
before that. In one night chaos had come and 
King Cold reigned. Fifty million dollars' worth 
of oranges is safely estimated as the price of 
that one "cold snap." Men who were worth 
$100,000.00 that night were automobiled down 
hill to the $.00 cross-roads the next day. 

Then the banks that had been cheerfully 
loaning money on forthcoming oranges and 
placing mortgages on flowery and fruitful 



92 Florida Fancies 

estates commenced to feel the strain and it re- 
minded one of a rapid-fire gun as they burst all 
over the State. 

Yet, fighting for their lives and their homes, 
with hearts full of hope, they commenced again, 
but fate or the Gods seemed to forbid. 

Frost after frost followed year after year, and 
either put back or destroyed the trees. Go 
with me, then, back to these scenes of former 
days. In every little village and hamlet we 
passed in our journeyings of these years agone, 
wreck and ruin reign. Mouldering and crumb- 
ling to the sand beneath, are its houses and its 
stores; doorless, windowless, and empty are 
its churches; untended, unfenced, and weed- 
grown are its graveyards. 

What the outcome will be, 't is hard to pre- 
dict. I venture to say that one half the houses 
in Florida's small villages are empty and de- 
serted and fast falling to pieces. Many and 
many a $20,000 plantation has been sold for 
the bare price of railroad tickets to a Northern 
State. Incalculable suffering was the price of 
that freeze, and let us hope that the Great One 
above has given strength and courage to the 
many thousands who in new homes and new 
places have the struggle of life to begin again. 



-JACK" STANLEY 

A ROMANCE OF THE CUBAN WAR 



93 



^^JACK" STANLEY 

A ROMANCE OF THE CUBAN WAR 




<C J^IAP^^B^ 



,B. 



JACK" STANLEY was my boyhood 
chum. How we came to assimilate, I 
know not, for we lived as far apart as the 
limits of Hartford would let us. And as for 
the social scale, there, also, was the same in- 
equality. ''Jack" was leader of the Asylum 
Hill coterie, the boys of the bon-ton district, 
while I was boss of the North End ''gang." I 
rather think, though, that our friendship dated 
from a certain baseball game when "Jack " and 
I, as leaders of our respective nines, got into a 
95 



96 



*' Jack " Stanley- 



dispute. I believe "Jack" licked 
me about three times in very close 
procession, but I had a lot of bull- 
headed English blood in me and I 
would n't admit the fact, and 
Jack " got tired. 
Then we shook hands, though 

I had a broken jaw and as 
many black eyes as I 

could carry. 

I think we were not 
over fifteen years old, 
but from that day we 
were inseparable. We 
entered High School to- 
gether. Let 's see, that 
Tiust have been about '79 
- '80. We were in the foot- 
team, and **Jack" played 
base, and I caught, on the 

II nine. The next year, I 
remember, the Chinese government entered a 
job lot of princes as scholars. They formed 
a baseball nine called the "Orientals," and 
"Jack" was elected captain and I manager of 
the team. 

We had a lot of fun with them, too. They 
were the most excitable devils I ever saw, and 
kept "Jack " and me in hot water all that sum- 




''Jack" Stanley 97 

mer. Between times they played cards, and 
they would n't be satisfied until they had mas- 
tered the delicacies of the great American game 
of poker. 

As they had pocket-money to refrigerate, 
neither Mr. Stanley nor myself objected, and 
memory rather tells me that as teachers we 
were a "howling" success. At least, I think 
that was our impression. 

At that time ''Jack " was a big, curly-headed 
six-footer, and the very beau ideal of an ath- 
lete. After three years our ways drifted apart. 
"Jack" had his life cut out for him. After 
High School he was booked for Yale. Then 
he was to make the tour of the world before he 
settled down to life work. 

With me it was different. I had to cut out 
my own way. Life was yet before me and I 
must make what I could out of it without help 
and without influence. "Jack" and I would 
meet, though, every chance we got. He, 
naturally, was a big favorite everywhere. Big- 
hearted, big-bodied, he towered above them all 
and won his way at college without seeming to 
lift a finger. He was stroke oar in the crew, 
and I '11 never forget the hugging he gave me 
after the race that year, when Yale won by five 
lengths. 

Then came the crash and the sudden change 



98 '^ack" Stanley 

in his fortunes. Stanley, Sr., committed sui- 
cide; "Jack's" mother followed to eternal rest 
the next day, and he was left to face the world 
alone, without a dollar. Ah, worse than that, 
for his father had left behind him, plundered, 
an estate he had charge of. 

A few days after the double funeral we met 
in the old homestead on the hill for the last 
time. "Jack," to me, was a semi-Deity, but 
he always turned to his "chum" for advice, 
and it seemed only natural in this, his triple 
trouble. He was very quiet as we talked mat- 
ters over. There were no tears, only a set, 
drawn look about the mouth and a sort of a 
stunned stare about the eyes. 

"Old man, we 've been through many tough 
times together, but this is worst of all. I want 
you to do me a favor," he said, speaking 
quickly, as if afraid of himself. "Grace — I 
dare n't see her. She 'd make a baby of me, 
and it 's better not. 

"Tell her," he continued, "that I release 
her. Tell her that if she does n't hear from 
me in three years to give up all thought of 
'Jack.' I leave to-night on the midnight for 
the West." 

Argument and entreaty were alike useless. 
He left on the express, and the next afternoon 
I called at Grace Grabert's house. I can't de- 



''Jack" Stanley 99 

scribe her to you ; I never could describe a 
woman in cold type, nor cold words either, but 
to me she was the handsomest girl in all the 
world. She always had been, but "Jack's" 
image had made her sacred even in thought. I 
softened my message as best I could, but it 
was a broken-hearted woman I left that day, 
so long ago. 



LofC. 




AFTER MANY 

FOR a year I had chap- 
ters of life from "Jack" 

by mail. He did n't say much 

about himself, but I could tell 

by the tone that he was n't 

climbing very fast. Then he 

shifted, and it had been three 

years since I had heard a word 

from him or of him. I was "on 

the road " then, and one day in 

Fort Wayne, Ind., bothered 

about the non-arrival of some 

samples, I mingled myself with 

the freight handlers in the 

freight house. 

'"'Out of the way there, sir! " 

I knew the voice in a second. It 

"Jack's." And he was the one-dollar-a 

motive power for a truck. I had grown 



was 

•day 

big 



100 



''Jack" Stanley loi 

and stout in the years agone, and he did n't 
know me at first. "I 'd like to punch your 
face for you," I yelled at him. He dropped 
the truck, rushed up and gave me a grip like 
a squeezing trip-hammer. Then he looked 
down at the fallen truck, glanced over his 
rough clothes, and turned white at the con- 
trast from former days. "I could n't get any- 
thing else to do, old man," he remarked. "It 
was this or starve." 

I made him quit the job then and there. I 
thrust fifty dollars into his hand. "Now, 
*Jack,' " I said, "you 've lost your nerve. 
Get around town, push yourself into some new 
clothes, and meet me at the hotel in two hours. 
Then we '11 talk over old times and I '11 fix 
things some way." 

Luck was with me. I had a letter of intro- 
duction to a prominent citizen, who proved to 
be the superintendent of the very road "Jack " 
was working for, and as the office of assistant 
superintendent was vacant, "Jack " got it that 
night. I had to do some tall hustling by wire, 
but Colonel Stevenson, who was manager of 
the Housatonic Railroad, helped me out with 
a wired fabrication which never hurt anybody, 
and "Jack " was fixed. 

Six months afterward the superintendent 
and "Jack" went to Mexico to build a big 



I02 'Jack" Stanley 

railroad. I had a hearty letter a few months 
later and I knew then that the tide was coming 
his way. 

''Jack " was never much of a correspondent. 
One night, several years later, I was sitting in 
the office wondering what had become of him, 
when a boy handed me this despatch : 

Hartford, Conn., June i6, 1890. 
You said if I ever needed a friend, to call on 
you. I want you now. Will you come to see me 
to-morrow afternoon ? Grace. 

What a flood of silver memories the name 
recalled ! What a wave of feeling washed over 
me! ''Jack " had sworn me to secrecy, and I 
had not even seen Grace since that parting, so 
many years ago 

The colored girl that answered the bell the 
next afternoon said that her "missis" would 
see me in her boudoir. How well I remem- 
bered that little sitting-room ! It seemed long 
ago — that day "Jack" and I were admitted 
there as Miss Grabert was convalescing after a 
long illness. Nothing was changed ; even the 
sofa she had lain on, looking like a fairy, was 
still there. 

Yes, she was changed. I noticed it as she 
crossed the room to greet me. Handsomer 



^'Jack" Stanley 103 

than ever, some would say, I suppose. But 
to me she could n't be. 

"You were 'Jack's ' chum," she said. 
" 'Jack's' chum! " " 'Jack's' chum!" 
The words seemed to fill the room like a sad 
refrain. "Jack's" chum? I choked down a 
surging sob in my throat as I looked. And I 
wondered if there would have been one chance 
in all the world for me if I had n't been 
Jack's ' chum ! ' ' Then she turned abruptly, 
and, with a suspicious moisture in her eyes, 
walked to the window. 

Out across the green meadows the summer 
wind gently stirred the sheaves of corn ; bor- 
dered by grassy banks, flowed the little stream 
where "Jack" and I had fished so often. 
Farther on in the distance, yet clear and dis- 
tinct, arose the blue ridge of hills, the scene of 
many a hunting-day's sport. I walked to her 
side, and as we gazed the gray mist of many 
years seemed to part and the memory of many 
a happy day came back, pictured in the sun- 
light. 

"I want you to read this," she said. It 
was a letter from "Jack," dated a week before 
from the City of Mexico : 

City of Mexico, June 9, 'go. 
Friend Grace : 

Is there hope for me? At last I can come 



I04 **Jack" Stanley 

to you with a heart of hope, with a father's name 
cleared, with a conscientious feeling that I can 
give you your proper position in the world. I am 
independent now and am on my way to fortune 
ahead. In all these years have you forgotten me ? 
Say but one word and I come to you ; years and 
years I have been working and longing for this 
time. What is my fate ? Not for one day have I 
forgotten you in all these years. Shall I come ? 

John Stanley. 

I looked at her inquiringly, but she avoided 
me and I could see that there were tears. "I 
have written him," she said, ''not to come. 
I 'm to be married to-morrow! 

''You were 'Jack's' best friend," she con- 
tinued. "He will think my letter so cruel. I 
want you to soften the blow and give him this 
for me." It was a handsome gold locket with 
her picture and a lock of hair in it. "Tell 
him," she said, "my word is plighted. It 's 
too late now! " 

I was going south, anyway, in a week, and I 
took a run over to Mexico. 

But "Jack" had disappeared and no one 
knew his destination. 




THE CUBAN WAR 

THE months and years rolled on apace and 
still no sign or word from "Jack." But 
he could n't lose me for I was destined to 
come upon him in another unexpected place. 
I ran over to Havana at the time the Cubans 
were having their lone-handed fight with Spain, 
before "Uncle Sam " "mixed in." 

And before I had been there an hour I was 
arrested by proxy. 

Let me digress right here and give you a 
little advice. If at any time the cold necessity 
of an arrest confronts you, always have it done 
by proxy. It is the only really genteel way to 
have it done. There 's no trouble at all in it 
for you. Everything goes along quietly and 
the other fellow has all the hard work. You 



105 



io6 'Jack" Stanley 

see, if you go to the bother of getting arrested 
yourself, it 's likely to be serious. 

With me it happened thusly : I had room 
thirty-nine on the Olivette. I also had a friend, 
S. D. Stradley, of 653 Broadway, New York, 
who had room forty-one — the next one to mine. 
According to Spanish reports, two villains of 
the deepest dye occupied these rooms. I was 
slated in the official papers, in regular rogues'- 
gallery style, this way : 

Weight, 150. 

Age, 36. 

Height, 5 ft. 10 in. 

Hair, brown. 

Eyes, gray. 

Mustaches, heavy. 

Feet, large. 

Nose, prominent. 

Profession, journalist. 

This was a very fair description of myself, 
and when I looked it over I had to acknowledge 
it. But it happened that J. S. Farnum, of 
Macon, Ga., another passenger, answered to 
the same description, according to Spanish 
ideas. The difference was that he owned a 
brewery instead of being a journalist, that he 
weighed a hundred pounds more than I did, 
that his eyes were brown, and a few other 
things. Be that as it may, the police boarded 



'Jack" Stanley 107 

the Olivette as usual, and the passports were 
taken up to be sent to our hotels. 

An hour later the hotel clerk handed me a 
passport, and looking it over I found that it 
was Mr. Farnum's. I explained the mistake, 
but did n't think anything else of it, as the 
clerk said undoubtedly Mr. Farnum had mine 
and that he would send over to the Hotel 
Ingleterra, where Mr. Farnum was stopping, 
and have the passports exchanged. Then I 
took a carriage and went out into the country 
to spend the day. 

When I jumped out of the carriage again at 
night in front of the hotel, I thought everybody 
had gone crazy. There was a mingling of 
Spanish exclamations, of French swear words, 
and of English slang that was indescribable, 
and out of it I gleaned the fact that Mr. 
Farnum had been arrested by the police in my 
stead, as a dynamiter, a leader of insurgents, 
and everythng that was real bad. He had 
a passport in my name, and all the protesta- 
tions in the world were useless, so he had to 
be locked up. 

Everybody advised me to fly at once. But 
as that was impossible without wings, I faced 
the music. The mayor happened to be a friend 
of mine, and I started in to see what was the 
trouble. The inmate of room thirty-nine, who 



io8 'Jack" Stanley 

was myself, had, it seems, a mysterious-looking 
blanket bag in his stateroom, loaded with dyna- 
mite, guns, pistols, and other deadly things. 

As all I brought with me was a dress suit 
case and as that was filled with soiled shirts 
mostly, I knew the bag could n't be mine. 
With the help of some poor Spanish and a few 
frantic gestures, I found that a mistake had 
been made; that the bag had come on the 
Olivette a week before, and that the man, who 
was a journalist and in a way answered to my 
description, had gone into the country. It was 
supposed that I was the man, and as Farnum, 
who was arrested for me, happened to have in 
his pocket a pistol which had seven chambers 
and, therefore, was a match for the one in the 
bag, I was roped in by proxy. 

They would n't let me look into the bag, 
but it 's my belief that there was nothing very 
"dynamity " in it, for it belonged to Richard 
Harding Davis, the author. He was in Cuba 
with Frederic Remington, the noted artist, and 
was the villain who occupied room thirty-nine. 
After a day's stop in Havana he had gone into 
the country, but when Richard got back to 
Havana I hope he had trouble on his hands 
right away. 

As if to make amends, the officials invited 
me to a banquet to be given to General Campos 



''Jack" Stanley 109 

that evening. While his poor boy-soldiers 
were at the front chasing the elusive Gomez, 
Campos took life easy at his city palace and at 
the banquet table. 

Perhaps I say this because I never thought 
much of Campos as a general, anyway. Cam- 
pos is regarded in Spain as the greatest general 
that country ever produced. Where he gets 
his medals, I can't perceive. When he con- 
sented to sail for Cuba and take charge of the 
war, all Spain breathed easier and seemed to 
feel as if that ended the revolution. The 
Spaniards must be an easily deluded lot of 
people. I have carefully looked up the ex- 
Governor-General's history and I can't find 
anything to pin their faith on. History does 
not tell us of one decisive battle he ever 
won. 

"Oh," you exclaim, "was n't the crowning 
glory of his life the conquering of the Cubans 
in the ten-years' war?" Perhaps it was, but 
it was mighty small glory, it strikes me. In 
1868 a few hundred Cubans and negroes started 
a revolution. The war continued until 1878, 
with eight years of active fighting out of the 
ten. The rebellion gained strength until the 
insurgents had an army of 50,000 in the field. 
Then Campos ended the rebellion. 

How? 



no ''Jack" Stanley 

Simply by a compromise! He granted the 
insurgents about all they asked for — freedom 
for the slaves, pardon for all rebels, restoration 
of all confiscated estates and representation for 
the Cubans by her own deputies in the Cortes 
at Madrid. 

A great victory, was n't it? 

And at what a cost ! During the contest the 
Spanish losses aggregated 8000 officers and 
2CXD,ooo privates, in battle and hospital and 
from the effects of climate. By adding to these 
figures some 15,000 troops left in Cuba after 
the capitulation and 34,000 Cubans under the 
command of Marshal Campos at the time of 
that capitulation (according to his personal 
statement), it will be seen that the force that 
Spain gradually pitched against the insurgents 
aggregated 257,000 men, beside 50,000 volun- 
teers organized on the island. The number of 
Cubans killed in battle and otherwise is esti- 
mated at from 40,000 to 50,000. 

And the money cost to Spain was $700,- 
000,000. 

Truly a great victory ! 

All these thoughts ran through my mind that 
banquet night, as Campos reeled off his flowery 
sentences. And I made up that same mind to 
get in one or two days on the other side of the 
house. 



''Jack" Stanley iii 

Maximo Gomez, the rebel leader, has my 
admiration. He was one of the generals who 
gave Campos such a "song and dance " in the 
ten-years' tinkering. 

Gomez, I knew, was the idol of his troops. 
There was no separate tent for him. He slept 
with his soldiers on the hillsides. No extra 
fare reached his table. If his soldiers suffered 
he suffered, also, and when in battle he was at 
the head and front, leading his men. 

So I secured a letter to him and, with the 
help of a Hotel Roma man-chambermaid, sewed 
it into my coat, — and just as easily wore the 
wrong coat the next day. I knew just where 
the rebels were, because I had a friend who was 
posted, and the afternoon found me about five 
miles beyond Marianna. I was halted by an 
insurgent scout a mile from camp and con- 
ducted to headquarters. Gomez and his staff 
were there, mounted, with, I should judge, a 
force of about six hundred cavalry. I realized 
then that I had left the letter, and for a minute 
the situation was ticklish. I explained as best 
I could, but I did n't blame Gomez for sniffing 
and retorting: ''That may be all right, seflor, 
but who will vouch for you? " 

**I will, with my life, general! " 

It was an aide-de-camp dressed in the uni- 
form of a general who had turned just then and 



112 'Jack" Stanley 

discovered to me "Jack" Stanley! I didn't 
need any better voucher, and in a moment we 
were all friends. We did n't have much time 
to talk then. "Jack," or the General, I should 
say, told me that they were awaiting a column 
of Spaniards who were coming to reinforce the 
guard at Guanajay. Gomez had sent his main 
body on to sack that town, and then to retreat 
to the sea and cover the landing of an expected 
vessel with arms and ammunition. 

It was growing dusk when the scouts ran in 
and there was a hurried mount, a rush of 
cavalry, and we were away like the wind for 
the column of Spanish infantry half a mile 
away. What a wild, weird rush it was ! Never 
shall I forget that scene. The boys of Spain, 
for they were nothing else, held their guns 
firmly like brave soldiers, and at thirty yards a 
volley was fired that sent many of our men to 
their Cuban reservations in the other world. 

But we were on them, and a wild onslaught 
it was. The Cubans, the white-haired head of 
Gomez at the front, fought like demons thirsty 
for blood, and though the enemy outnumbered 
us two to one, they turned and fled in con- 
fusion. No living power could have withstood 
that shock. 

I don't know what in "great Scott " got into 
my Cuban pony, but the smell of war seemed 



'Jack" Stanley 113 

to suit him, and I was in among the staff with 
their trained cavalry horses. 

Suddenly I heard the order to retreat given 
in Gomez's short, sharp-voiced tones, and as I 
turned I could see the reason. A couple of 
columns of reinforcements were coming down 
the hill at double-quick time, and the fleeing 
comrades were returning. I looked around for 
"Jack," but could n't see him. I heard the 
neigh of his horse and, looking back, saw it was 
riderless and motionless, but neighing piteously. 

Despite the yells of my comrades, I turned 
back, and through the gathering gloom could 
just see Jack with one hand on the stirrup, 
trying vainly to crawl up into the saddle. His 
faithful jet-black companion seemed to realize 
the misery of the situation. All this I took in, 
in a second. Then I jumped down and, with 
a strength I never thought I possessed, pushed 
"Jack" in front of the saddle and leaped in 
myself. 

Not a moment too soon, for with a wild yell 
the Spaniards were on us. But the black 
seemed to know by instinct what was needed 
and he flew like a Kansas cyclone, my own 
horse following. A few stray shots, a hole 
through my hat, and we were out of reach. 

For a mile we kept on this way. Then I 
halted. "Jack" had fainted and blood from 



114 ''Jack" Stanley 

a bullet wound in his side soaked through 
his uniform. I did n't dare stop any longer, 
and for miles we kept on. Then, feeling safe 
from pursuit, I guided the horses down under 
a rocky boulder near the seashore. 

By this time "Jack " had revived, and, dark- 
ness having set in, I stripped him and, tearing 
his shirt, bound up the wound as best I could. 

"It's no use, old man," he said. "Guess 
1 'm done for this time." It looked so, but I 
lied with the best face I could, and by-and-by 
he fell into a stupored sleep which lasted until 
morning dawned. 

What a long dreary night it was ! Overhead 
the clouds hung dark and thick. The monoto- 
nous dash of the waves sounded like a requiem 
over our buried hopes. Now and then, I heard 
a faint sound as of some one walking near. I 
held my breath, because I knew it meant death 
for both, to be caught. 

I did n't dare leave him. Towards morning 
he moved uneasily, as if in pain ; then at the 
first gray streak of dawn he awoke. One could 
easily see it was his last day. The ashy pallor 
of death had already stamped its seal upon his 
face. 

"What of Grace?" 

Then I told him : Of her marriage, of the 
birth of a boy, how she had named him — John 



'Jack" Stanley 115 

— and it seemed to give new life as I said it. 
Then I told him of our last interview. He 
asked eagerly after the locket, and it pleased 
him that it was as near to him as Havana. By 
a last effort of will he had seemed to hold him- 
self together, but when it was finished, a child 
could see he was going fast. 

''Harry," he said, "it was my last battle. 
I 'm going now. Tell Grace I loved her to the 
last, and bury, b . " 

A last gasp — the head fell heavy on my arm, 
and all was over. The sentence was unfinished, 
but I knew that if it was in my earthly power 
the locket would be buried with him. 

That was his last thought. 

Afar off from over the waters came the faint 
sound of a shot. It was the sunrise gun from 
Morro Castle's cannon. 

Away across the red-sunned waters of the 
sea, one could faintly see the blood-and-gold 
flag of Spain climbing to the staff-head. 

The sound of the sea seemed stilled in that 
silence. The end of the tide of life had come 
and with it the turn of the tide of the sea. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE BURIAL 

WHAT a gruesome, and yet grotesque, 
burial! I often wonder if, in all the 
centuries and ages of time, man was ever be- 
fore buried like that. The scene is yet fresh 
before me, and will be till the last thread of 
life is cut. 

I found the horses a mile away. Then I 
commenced to plan. I could n't leave * ' Jack's" 
body to the buzzards and, as the country was 
covered with strolling Spanish soldiers, it was 
death to be caught with it. My luck — which 
has ever been proverbial — was still with me, 
and I ran into one of those country Cuban 
homesteads. Four poles, the sides covered 
with mud, by courtesy called plaster, and a 
thatched roof made the house. 

Three generations lived and slept in it. The 
grandfather and grandmother, hoary and yel- 
low-parchmented with age, then the next two 
generations down to a crying babe in the 
mother's arms. Not to mention the litter of 
little pigs and the family supply of chickens, 
ii6 



^'Jack" Stanley 



117 



which also occupied the same apartment. There 
was only one room, with the bare ground for a 
floor, and the chickens and pigs were just as 
much at home as the regularly con- 
stituted family. 

As it happened, they were old 




friends of mine. I did n't recognize 
them at first, but as soon as I saw on 
the wall one of my amateur photo- 
graphs of Cuban life, framed with fresh 
flowers, I remembered. A year be- 
fore, with some friends I had "toured " 
through this part and had taken several 
of the hut and the combined "family," 
and all. 

What a hearty greeting it was ! The 
forgive me if I worked on those people's 
pathies, but it was that or nothing. The 



views 
pigs 

Lord 
sym- 
head 



ii8 ''Jack" Stanley 

of the second generation got out his cart and 
''Jack's" poor lifeless corpse, covered with 
sugar-cane, was conveyed to the hut. When 
I tried to tell them what I wanted it seemed 
as if the last tie that bound me to earth was 
broken. I knew that they were all risking 
their lives, what little home they had, — and it 
was just as much to them as the Vanderbilt 
marble palace is to its owners — that if they 
were caught it was the end of all to them. 

But when I saw how willingly they helped 
me in all my plans it brought back new life and 
new belief in my heart. The only thing to do 
was to bury "Jack " under the hut. It was n't 
safe to dig a grave outside, for the Spanish 
headquarters were only a mile away. So I left 
them to their melancholy task and started for 
Havana. What I wanted was an English 
prayer-book and the locket. I had neglected 
to get from General Campos passes through 
the lines, but by the help of a tailor's bill with 
a signature on the end and of a poker face, I 
got through. Then, at Havana, I got from 
General Campos passes back. 

It was ten o'clock at night before I returned 
to the hut. A six-foot grave had been dug 
and "Jack's " body, covered with flowers from 
the field, lay within it. I had secured an Eng- 
lish prayer-book, and at midnight I read the 



'Jack" Stanley 



119 



service for the dead. The picture of that burial 
seems sacrilegious, but when I think of the 
brave, strong, earnest hearts around that grave, 
who risked their lives to give my only friend a 




burial, an emotion of sanctification is ever as- 
sociated with the memory of that thatched 
hut. 

Two mothers with babes in their arms, a 
horde of small children, and the grandparents, 
now nearing the end of a century of life, 
gathered round. 

The roosters with their ill-timed crowing, the 
pigs with their curious but gruesome grunts, 
were there. The light was dim and poor, but 



I20 



''Jack" Stanley 



through my tears I struggled, and all that was 
mortal of John Stanley was earthed over with 
the clay of Cuban soil. There was no winding- 
sheet or shroud, but on top of the wild flowers 
I placed the black satin lining of my overcoat, 
which had been fastened to my saddle. It was 
the best I could do, and no man can do more. 
So he sleeps. Away off in that sunny clime, 
far from home and friends, but with one heart 
ever turning, ever thinking of the hands that 
clasp a golden locket, Grace Grabert's last gift. 




MAY 8 1903 



